Somerset Maugham, the world-renowned literary giant, has more than 20 books, 30 plays and scores of short stories and essays to his credit.
At the age of 86, still speaking rather stammeringly, Maugham said, “What has influenced my life more than any other single things has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature.”
***************
Gandhi was late for his Gymnastics class by almost an hour. The teacher had marked him absent and also imposed a penalty on him. Gandhi defended himself by saying that he was looking after his ailing father and the clouds had misguided him with the time (Gandhi, like most of the people in those days, relied on sunlight, cloud movements to track time). The teacher dismissed these and called him a liar for having given such excuses.
It was this incident which made Gandhi realize that anyone who wanted to be truthful had to be mindful of everything including discipline and punctuality.
0 comments:
Post a Comment