SKILL
A small factory had to stop operations when an essential piece of machinery broke down. No one could get the machine operating. An outside expert was finally called in. The fellow looked over the situation for a moment, then took a hammer and gently tapped the machine at a certain spot. It began running again immediately and continued to run as it nothing had ever been wrong.
When the expert submitted his bill for one hundred dollars, the plant supervisor hit the ceiling and demanded an itemized bill. The bill the man submitted was as follows: For hitting the machine, $1. For knowing where to hit, $99.
—Bits & Pieces
SLEEPING
A professor stopped in the middle of his lecture and said, “If all students who sleep during my lectures were placed end to end, they would be more comfortable.”
Long sleepers (nine hours or more) are likely to be anxious, mildly depressed, chronic complainers about minor aches and pains, and not very sure of themselves. Short sleepers (six hours or less) are likely to be energetic, ambitious, decisive, socially adept, and satisfied with life. These are characteristics of males studied in psychological tests at the sleep laboratory of Boston State Hospital.
—Science Digest
People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one.
Getting up in the morning is a matter of mind over mattress.
SMILE
A smile is such a little thing
To have such a vital worth;
Sad faces it dispels at sight,
It makes the darkest places bright
And changes gloom to mirth.
A smile is such a passing thing
To bring such lasting pleasure;
It eases up the load of care
And rids the soul of dark despair
No one its worth can measure.
—Ben L. Byer
Nothing on earth can smile but man. Gems may flash reflected light, but what is a diamond flash compared with an eye-flash and a mind-flash? A smile is a light in the window of the face by which the heart signifies it is at home and waiting.
—Henry Ward Beecher
A smile can add a great deal to one’s face value.
A smile is worth a million dollars but it doesn’t cost a cent.
SMOKING
“I am not much of a mathematician,” said the cigarette, “but I can add to a man’s nervous trouble. I can subtract from his physical energy. I can multiply his aches and pains. I can divide his mental powers. I take interest from his work and discount his chances for success.”
If you smoke, you won’t go to hell, but you’ll smell like you’ve been there.
A young man entered the tobacco shop in the plush hotel and asked for a pack of cigarettes. “What kind?” asked the clerk. “Any kind,” replied the man. “King size or regular?” “King.” “Filter tip or plain?” “Plain.” “Mentholated or straight?” “Mentholated.” “Crushproof box of softpack?” “Never mind,” said the man. “I think I just broke the habit.”
A professor in Switzerland warned her class to beware of polls and pollsters. “They can get any answer they want with loaded questions,” she warned. She cited the case of Swiss voters who replied “No,” when asked if they approved of smoking while praying. “The vote turned to ‘Yes’ when the same people were asked if they approved of praying while smoking,” she told the class.
SOLITUDE
Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.
—Edward Gibbon
SONSHIP
During World War II, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was waiting at an airport for a plane.
A sailor stepped to a ticket window and asked for a seat on the same plane explaining, “I want to see my mother; I ain’t got much time.”
The indifferent young woman at the ticket window was not impressed. “There’s a war on, you know,” she replied curtly.
At this point, Roosevelt, who had overheard the conversation, stepped to the window and told her to give the sailor his seat. A friend spoke in surprise, “Teddy, aren’t you in a hurry too?” “It’s a matter of rank,” came the reply. “I’m only a general; he’s a son!”
—Charles R. Diffee
SORROW
Shared sorrow is half sorrow.
—Danish proverb
Believe me, every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and oftentimes we call a man cold when he is only sad.
—Henry W. Longfellow
An elderly Chinese philosopher was approached by a young woman who was grief stricken because of the loss of her only son. “I will be able to help you,” he assured her, “if you will bring me some mustard seed, but it must be obtained at a home where there has never been any sorrow.” Eagerly the woman started her search. In every place she visited, however, there had been trials and loss of loved ones. Returning, she exclaimed, “How selfish I have been! Sorrow is common to all.” “Ah,” said the elderly sage, “you have now learned a valuable lesson and acquired a wealth of wisdom which not only has eased your own grief but also has prepared you to sympathize with others.”
A sign on the side of a garage in southern Georgia read, “We can mend everything but a broken heart.”
SOULWINNING
Two friends met and, after a chat, one said to the other, “Come and have a round of golf on Sunday morning.”
“Oh, no. I have to attend church.”
“Well,” replied his friend, “I do not know what your religion is, but you keep it to yourself. I have asked you to play golf half-a-dozen times, but you have never invited me to your church.”
I have always felt that wherever doctors could go to save men’s bodies, I could go to save their souls.
—D. L. Moody
Dean Hart once sat at the same table with a Roman Catholic priest. During the conversation, the Dean said, “Father, if I believed as you do that I could pray people out of a suffering hell and purgatory, I would spend all my time on my knees, getting them out.” The priest answered, “And if I believed as you do, that once a man is in hell he can never get out, I would wear out shoe leather urging, constraining, compelling men and women to get saved now!”
Everyone knows of Heinz, of the “fifty-seven varieties,” but few know of his zeal as a soulwinner. At a revival meeting one day, the minister turned to him and said, “You are a Christian man; why aren’t you up and at it?” He went home in anger and went to bed, but he could not sleep. At four o’clock in the morning he prayed that God would make him a power in his work, and then went to sleep. At the next meeting of bank presidents which he attended shortly afterward, he turned to the man next to him and spoke to him about Christ. His friend looked at him in amazement and said, “I’ve wondered many times why you never spoke to me about it if you really believed in Christ.” That man was the first of 267 people Heinz won to Christ after that time.
O Lord, give me souls, or take my soul!
—George Whitefield
Praying Hyde, a missionary in India, pleaded, “Father, give me these souls or I die.”