From someone's blog

• "Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes.
• Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly.
• Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end.
• What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.
• Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such. "
  
  Presentations: Repackage Your Words
  Paraphrase. Don't read the words on a PowerPoint slide verbatim. This causes the audience to feel patronized and become resentful. To avoid the verbatim effect, paraphrase or juxtapose the words on the slide or use synonyms. For instance, if the slide title reads, "Significant Revenue Growth," say, "Our revenues have grown impressively since last year…"Your audience will appreciate the effort.

Margaret Thatcher 3

Perhaps the biggest excitement of my early years was a visit to London when I was twelve years old. I came down by train in the charge of a friend of my mother's. Arriving at Kings' cross where I was met by Reverend Skinner and his wife, family friends, who were going to look after me. The first impact of London was overwhelming. King's Cross itself was a giant bustling cavern. The rest of the city had all the dazzle of a commercial and imperial capital. For the first time in my life I saw people from foreign countries. Some in the traditional native dress of India and Africa. The sheer volume of traffic and of pedestrians was exhilarating. They seemed to generate a sort of electricity. London's buildings were impressive for another reason; begrimed with soot, they had a dark imposing magnificence which constantly reminded me that I was at the centre of the world. I was taken by the Skinner's to all the usual sites. I fed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. I rode the Underground, a slightly forbidding experience for a child. I visited the zoo where I rode on an elephant and recoiled from the reptiles: an early portent of my relations with Fleet street. And I went to look at Downing Street. But unlike the young Harold Wilson, I did not have the prescience to have my photogragh taken outside No.10."

Margaret Thatcher 2

Methodism itself, of course, has in the form of the Wesley hymns, some really fine religious poetry.
It was, I confess, the musical side of Methodism which I liked best.
Our church had an exceptionally good choir. Every other year we would perform an oratorio:
Handel's Messiah, Haydn's Creation or Mendelssohn's Elijah. We were a musical family. From the age of five my parents had me learn the piano. My mother played too. Sadly, at sixteen, I found it necessary to stop music lessons when I was cramming for my university entrance. And I still regret that I never took up the piano again.

Margaret Thatcher 1

Narrator: In this next short talk, Margaret Thatcher, the future Prime Minister of England, reminisces about her family and her childhood, and she and her family's love of music. She vividly describes her first awe inspiring visit to London. Her smaller city background had not prepared her for the many wonders of London, including a first walk past by No.10 Downing Street (the Home of the Prime Minister) little knowing that someday she would be living there.

"Age 10, I was the proud winner of a prize at the Grantham Eisteddfod for reciting poetry. In the first years of the war I would go out as part of a concert party to the surrounding villages, and recite from my Oxford Book of English Verse. A book which even now, is never far from reach.

Song Meiling 2

Nevertheless, when the greedy flames of war inexorably spread in the Pacific following the perfidious attack on Pearl Harbor, Malaya and lands in and around China Sea and one after another of these places fell, the pendulum swung to the other extreme.

Doubts and fears lifted their ugly heads and the world began to think that the Japanese were Nietzschean Supermen, superior in intellect and physical prowess.

A belief which the Gobineau's and the Houston Chamberlain's and their ex-pupils, the Nazi racists had propounded about the Nordics.

Again, now the prevailing opinion seems to consider the defeat of the Japanese as of relative unimportance and that Hitler is our first concern.

This is not borne out by actual facts. Nor is it to the interest of the United Nations as a whole to allow Japan to continue not only as a vital potential threat but as a waiting sword of Damocles ready to descend at movements' notice."

bear - borne

Song Meiling 1

"You, as representatives of the American people have before you the glorious opportunity of carrying on the pioneer work of your ancestors, beyond the frontiers of physical and geographical limitations. Their brawn and thews braved undoubtedly almost unbelievable hardships to open up the new continent.
The modern world knows them for their vigor and intensity of purpose and for their accomplishments.

You have today before you, the immeasurably greater opportunity to implement these same ideals and to help bring about the liberation of man's spirit in every part of the world. In order to accomplish this purpose, we of the United Nations must now so prosecute the war that victory will be ours decisively and with all good speed.

Sun Tzu, the well known Chinese strategist said 'In order to win, know thyself and thy enemy.' We have also the saying 'It takes little effort to watch the other fellow carry the load.' In spite of these teachings from a wise old past which are shared by every nation, there has been a tendency to belittle the strength of our opponents. When Japan thrust total war on China in 1937, military experts of every nation did not give China even a ghost of a chance. But, when Japan failed to bring China cringing to her knees as she wanted, the world took solace in this phenomenon by declaring that they had overestimated Japan's military might......

From the Kitchen to the Frying Pan

Song Meiling, Margaret Thatcher, Hilary Clinton

Narrator: Hello, readers, this is Listening to celebrities, a publication of Crazy English. In this Chapter, we will discuss Song Meiling, Margaret Thatcher and Hilary Clinton. The first chapter is entitled "from the Kitchen to the Frying Pan".

The first talk is by Song Meiling and these are excerpts from her very good speech to the U.S. Congress (February, 1943). This was part of a broader effort on the part of she and her husband (Chiang Kai - shek) to obtain the support of the American people and the American government for China, in China's fight against Japan. In fact most of the money, guns and food supplied by America was either taken for the Kuomintang leaders personal use or it was used to fight Mao. Only very little of this money was used against the Japanese. Nevertheless, this was however, an inspiring and great speech.