Sure-fire Timepiece
Victor Borge told a friend that he could tell time by his piano. His friend was incredulous, so Borge volunteered to demonstrate. He pounded out a crashing march. Immediately there came a banging on the wall and a shrill voice screamed, “Stop that noise. Don’t you know it’s 1:30 in the morning?”
News Too Late
A man had a checkup and then went in to see his doctor to get the results. The doctor said he had bad news and worse news for him, which did he want to hear first? The man was a bit nonplussed and said he’d rather hear the bad news first. The doctor said, “The bad news is that you only have twenty-four hours to live.”
At this the man jumped up, totally flabbergasted and distraught. He paced the doctor’s office and complained, “Twenty-four hours to live? I can’t possibly get my affairs in order that quickly. I can’t believe this, it is incredible! What could be worse news than this?”
The doctor said, “The worse news is that I was supposed to tell you this yesterday, but I forgot.”
Cynical View of History
History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools. –Ambrose Bierce
Fill the Spaces
Select a large box, and place in it as many cannon balls as it will hold, and it is, after a fashion, full; but it will hold more if smaller matters be found. Being a quantity of marbles; very many of these may be packed in the spaces between the larger globes; the box is now full, but still only in a sense; it will contain more yet. There are spaces in abundance, into which you may shake a considerable quantity of small shot, and now the chest is filled beyond all question; but yet there is room. You cannot put in another shot or marble, much less another ball; but you will find that several pounds of sand will slide down between the larger materials, and even then between the granules of sand; if you empty yonder jug, there will be space for all the water and for the same quantity several times repeated. Where there is no space for the great, there may be room for the little; where the little cannot enter, the less can make its way; and where the less is shut out, the least of all may find ample room. So where time is, as we say, fully occupied, there must be stray moments, occasional intervals, and bits of time which might hold a vast amount of little usefulness in the course of months and years. –Charles H. Spurgeon
Waiting for Fame
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Timing Is Everything
It isn’t what you know that counts; it’s what you can think of in time.
Hurry!
An insurance agent received a phone call from an excited woman, “I want to insure my house,” she said. “Can I do it by phone?” “I’m sorry,” answered the man, “but I’d have to see it first.” “Then you’d better get here right away,” exclaimed the woman, “because the place is on fire!”
Slow Down
A woman who had been living a very high-pressured life moved with her family from the city to the country. The family had resolved to reduce the stresses and tensions that they had been under by entering into a gentler, easier life-style. A neighbor called on the mother one day and noticed something that had been pinned on the family bulletin board. She asked about it and the mother said, “Oh, that’s a poem that represents what our moving here was all about. The poem starts out, ‘Lord, slow me down.’ But I haven’t had time to read the rest of it.”