If you want to win friends, make it a point to remember them. If you remember my name, you pay me a subtle compliment; you indicate that I have made an impression on you. Remember my name and you add to my feeling of importance
If your friend is already dead, and being eaten by vultures, I think it's okay to feed some bits of your friend to one of the vultures, to teach him to do some tricks. But ONLY if you're serious about adopting the vulture.
- Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts (Saturday Night Live)
In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.
His name was Fleming and he was a poor
Scottish farmer. One day, while trying to make a living for his family, he
heard a cry for help coming from a nearby bog. He dropped his tools and
ran to the bog. There, mired to his waist in black muck, was a terrified
boy, screaming and struggling to free himself. Thinking and acting
quickly, farmer Fleming saved the lad from what could have been a slow and
terrifying death.
The next day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman’s sparse
surroundings. An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and introduced
himself as the father of the boy Fleming had saved. “I want to repay
you,” said the nobleman. “You saved my son’s life.”
“No, I can’t accept payment for what I did,” the farmer replied,
waving off the offer.
At that moment, the farmer’s own son came to the door of the family
hovel. “Is that your son?” the nobleman asked.
“Yes,” the farmer replied proudly.
“I’ll make you a deal. Let me take him and give him a good education.
If the lad is anything like his father, he’ll grow to a man you can be
proud of.”
And that is what he did. In time, Farmer Fleming’s son graduated from
St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School in London and went on to become known
throughout the world as the noted Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of
penicillin.
Years afterward, the nobleman’s son was stricken with pneumonia. What
saved him? Penicillin. The name of the nobleman? Lord Randolph Churchill.
His son’s name: Winston Churchill.
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