Proverbs Proverbs have been well defined thus: “Short sentences founded on long experience”. They are brief, pithy sayings condensing in a witty or striking form the wisdom of experience. Most of them are anonymous; and many are very old, having been handed down by word of mouth from father to son for generations. Being short and striking, they are easily remembered. The use of rhyme (or of assonance) and alliteration helps...

The Autobiography of a Rupee I am now an old coin, and have been in circulation for many years. But I can still remember my early life. My active life began when I was paid over the counter of a bank, along with other new rupees, to a gentleman who cashed a cheque. I went off jingling in his pocket; but I was not long there, as he gave me to...

Fashion “Fashion” is thus defined in the dictionary: “The prevailing mode in such things as are subject to change in form or style, as in ornament and etiquette, and especially in dress.” It is the name given to the prevailing style of living among the upper classes and the rich. Among the members of the “smart set “of any country, certain styles of houses, furniture, foods and drinks, times of meals,...

A Rolling Stone Gathers no Moss 5 Best Essay on ” A Rolling Stone Gathers no Moss” Essay  No. 01 Why a stone should want to gather moss, is hard to say. But the proverb is an old one, and everyone knows what it means. The “rolling stone” is the man who is always changing his occupations and pursuits, and never settles down steady to anything. Popular wisdom says that such...

Example is Better than Precept In every sphere, “example is better than precept”. That is, it is far more effective to show a learner how to do some-thing by doing it before him correctly oneself, than merely to tell him what to do. This is how the drill sergeant teaches raw recruits their military drill. He first goes through the various movements himself before them, sloping arms, presenting arms, trailing arms,...

The Forming of Habits Habits and field-paths are formed in the same way: by repetition. Villagers, as a rule, do not deliberately make a footpath to the next village. They just go the shortest or easiest way over the fields. Day after day, people go and come the same way. Their feet tread down the grass and beat the earth hard. By their repeated walking in the same direction a track...

Choice of Books “Of making of many books there is no end.” So wrote the wise author of “Ecclesiastes” (a book in the Bible) over two thousand years ago. In his day, fifteen hundred years before the invention of printing, books had to be written out by hand on parchment—a slow and laborious process. Yet, in the opinion of that wise man, there were even then too many! What would he...

The fools of Yesterday are the Wise men of Today The greatness of a wise man is rarely fully appreciated by the people of his own time. He is like a high mountain, the top of which cannot be seen by dwellers at its foot, but only by those at a distance. As Jesus Christ said, when he visited his native town of Nazareth, and his fellow towns-men “were offended in...