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M. de la Rochefoucauld’s 15 maxims -written 400 years ago

  1. “It is a kind of happiness to know how unhappy we must be.”
  2. “In their first passion, women love their lovers; in all the others, they love love.”
  3. “In jealousy there is more of self-love than love.”
  4. “One is never so happy or so unhappy as one fancies.”
  5. “Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.”
  6.  “Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.”
  7. “Everyone blames his memory; no one blames his judgment.”
  8. “There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.”
  9. “It is almost always a fault of one who loves not to realize when he ceases to be loved.”
  10. “When a man is in love, he doubts, very often, what he most firmly believes.”
  11. “There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.”
  12. “If we resist our passions it is more from their weakness than from our strength.”
  13. “We are more interested in making others believe we are happy than in trying to be happy ourselves.”
  14. “Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire.”
  15. “When a man must force himself to be faithful in his love, this is hardly better than unfaithfulness.”

Life Insights From Great Inventors


* “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” – Thomas Edison.

* “The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.” – Nikola Tesla

* “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.” – Alexander Graham Bell

* “A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.” – Charles Kettering

* “The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.” – Thomas Edison

* “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

* “A successful person isn’t necessarily better than her less successful peers at solving problems; her pattern-recognition facilities have just learned what problems are worth solving.” – Ray Kurzweil

* “It doesn’t matter if you try and try and try again, and fail. It does matter if you try and fail, and fail to try again.” – Charles Kettering

* “What we do during our working hours determines what we have; what we do in our leisure hours determines what we are.” – George Eastman

* “God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

* “Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.” – Thomas Edison

* “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” – Alexander Graham Bell

* “We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee to fail intelligently… to experiment over and over again and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.” – Charles Kettering

India has more cell phones than toilets: UN report

Far more people in India have access to a mobile phone than to a toilet, according to a UN study on how to improve sanitation levels globally.

India’s mobile subscribers totalled 563.73 million at the last count, enough to serve nearly half of the country’s 1.2 billion population.

But just 366 million people — around a third of the population — had access to proper sanitation in 2008, said the study published by the United Nations University, a UN think-tank.

“It is a tragic irony to think in India, a country now wealthy enough that roughly half of the people own phones,” so many people “cannot afford the basic necessity and dignity of a toilet,” said UN University director Zafar Adeel.

A Successful Life

In his book, “A Strategy for Daily Living,” trading expert Dr. Ari Kiev notes, “A successful life does not result from chance, fate, or good fortune, but from a succession of successful days lived in pursuit of a worthy pursuit.” Dr. Kiev points out that you can work toward your goal every day, day after day, and eventually even the most elusive goal can be achieved. Perhaps you will make more progress on some days than others, but what is most important is that you never give up and spend every day working toward your goal.

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