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WITandWISDOM(tm) - October 6, 2000 ~~~~~~~ THOUGHTS: "As A Man Thinketh" who said: "Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself." - James Allen, From his book "As A Man Thinketh", p11, ISBN 0-88029-785-9 Submitted by Steve Holzer ~~~~~~~ SPECIAL THOUGHTS: How a person reacts to criticism often means the difference between success and failure. Take the case of Ole Bull, the famous Norwegian violinist of the past century. His practical father, a chemist, sent him to the University of Christiania to study for the ministry and forbade him to play his beloved violin. He promptly flunked out and, defying his father, devoted all his time and energy to the violin. Unfortunately, though he had great ability, his teachers were relatively unskilled, so that by the time he was ready to start his concert tour he wasn't prepared. In Italy a Milan newspaper critic wrote: "He is an untrained musician. If he be a diamond, he is certainly in the rough and unpolished. There were two ways Ole Bull could have reacted to that criticism. He could have let it make him angry, or he could learn from it. Fortunately he chose the latter. He went to the newspaper office and asked to see the critic. The astounded editor introduced him. Ole spent the evening with the 70-year-old critic, asked about his faults, and sought the older man's advice on how to correct them. Then he canceled the rest of his tour, returned home, and spent the next six months studying under really able teachers. He practiced hours upon hours to overcome his faults. Finally, he returned to his concerts and, when only 26, became the sensation of Europe Source: Bits & Pieces, April 27, 1995, Copyright (c) Economic Press - www.epinc.com/ via http://www.witandwisdom.org ~~~~~~~ THIS & THAT: THINGS A CAT THINKS ABOUT I could have sworn I heard the can opener. Is there something I'm not getting when humans make noise with their mouths? Why doesn't the government do something about dogs? I wonder if Morris really liked 9-Lives, or did he have ulterior motives? Hey -- no kidding, I'm sure that's the can opener. Hmmm ... If dogs serve humans, and humans serve cats, why can't we cats ever get these dogs to do anything for us? Would humans have built a vast and complex civilization of their own if we cats hadn't given them a reason to invent sofas and can openers in the first place? This looks like a good spot for a nap. If that really was the can opener, I'll play finicky just to let them know who's boss! Source: Kitty's Daily Mews, Copyright (c) 1997-2000 All rights reserved worldwide, kittysdailymews- subscribe@topica.com via http://www.witandwisdom.org ~~~~~~~ KEEP SMILING: I had a near death experience that has changed me forever. The other day, I went horseback riding. Everything was going fine until the horse starts bouncing out of control. I tried with all my might to hang on, but was thrown off. Just when things could not possibly get worse, my foot gets caught in the stirrup. When this happened, I fell head first to the ground. My head continued to bounce harder as the horse did not stop or even slow down. Just as I was giving up hope and losing consciousness, the Walmart manager came and unplugged it. Thank goodness for heros. Submitted by Heidi ~~~~~~~ TRIVIA: In 1977, a young Arab girl was flown to England in a semiconscious state and admitted to a London hospital. The doctors were baffled by her condition, which continued to deteriorate over the next five days. On the sixth day, the child began to lose her hair. The nurse watching over her was suddenly struck by the similarity of her symptoms to those of a series of murder victims in Agatha Christie's The Pale Rider, which she was reading at the time. The fictional characters had been killed by thallium poisoning; subsequent tests on the Arab girl revealed that she had high levels of thallium in her urine. Three weeks later, the child was fit enough to return home, and the case was written up in the British Journal of Hospital Medicine, with a note of thanks to the observant nurse and the late Dame Agatha Christie. From: Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes Source: Bits & Pieces, August 17, 1995, Copyright (c) Economic Press, Inc., www.epinc.com via http://www.witandwisdom.org |