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WITandWISDOM(tm) - July 23, 2001 ~~~~~~~ THOUGHTS: Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited. - Jean-Jacques Rousseau Source: Awesome Quotes, http://www.coolnewsletters.com ~~~~~~~ SPECIAL THOUGHTS: It is possible that our influence may be as powerful as that of the little girl whose life work was so beautifully but tersely written on the marble stone that marked her resting place. On her tombstone were chiseled these words: "A child of whom her playmates said, ' 'Tis easier to be good when she is with us.'" Oh that we might be worthy of such an epitaph! By Charles L. Paddock Source: Signs of the Times, Copyright (c) December 2, 1924, Pacific Press, http://www.pacificpress.com/signs Submitted by Dale Galusha ~~~~~~~ THIS & THAT: Before she died, an elderly lady wanted to visit England, the home of her ancestors. She went to the Federal Office and asked for a passport. "You must take the loyalty oath first," the passport clerk said. "Raise your right hand, please." The senior citizen raised her right hand as the clerk asked, "Do you swear to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, domestic or foreign?" The sweet old face paled and the voice trembled as she responded, "Well, I guess so, but . . . will I have help, or will I have to do it all by myself?" Source: The Funnies, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/andychaps_the- funnies ~~~~~~~ KEEP SMILING: My son worked at a fast- food restaurant when he was in high school. One night while he was manning the drive- thru, a customer told him that the intercom wasn't working properly. My son went about filling the order while a female co-worker fiddled with the intercom. She asked, "Is that okay now?" "Well, no," the patron replied. "Now you sound like a girl." By Jeanne Phelps Source: Reader's Digest, Copyright (c) February 1999, http://www.readersdigest.com ~~~~~~~ TRIVIA: Six days a week an Englishman named Roy Dean sits down and does in a matter of minutes something that many of us cannot do at all: He completes the crossword puzzle in the London Times. Dean is the, well, the dean of the British crossword. In 1970, under test conditions, he solved a Times crossword in just 3 minutes and 45 seconds, a feat so phenomenal that it has stood unchallenged for 25 years. Unlike American crosswords, which are generally straightforward affairs, requiring you merely to fit a word to a definition, the British variety are infinitely more fiendish, demanding mastery of the whole armory of verbal possibilities - puns, anagrams, palindromes, lipograms, and whatever else springs to the devisers devious mind. British crosswords require you to realize that carthorse is an anagram of orchestra, that contaminated can be made into no admittance, that emigrants can be transformed into streaming. Cinerama into American, Old Testament into most talented, and World Cup team into (a stroke of genius, this one) talcum powder. (How did anyone ever think of that?) It is a wonder that anyone ever completes them . . .. By Bill Bryson, in "The Mother Tongue," Published by Morrow/Avon, (c) 1991, ISBN: 0380715430, http://isbn.nu/0380715430/price Source: Bits & Pieces, February 29, 1996, Copyright (c) Economic Press, Inc., http://www.epinc.com |