A few years ago when I traveled to New Zealand to do a conference, I stayed in a hotel in Christchurch. One evening I was thirsty and started looking for a Coke machine. When I couldn’t find one and I saw a door marked “Staff,”...
English Version: I´m going to write about one of the short stories included in the book "Kurz und Buendig,Die schnellesten Geschichten der Welt ( short and colourful,the quickest short stories in the world")by different German writers. The story is by Kurt Tucholsky ,a jewish German journalist...
After receiving the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918, Max Planck went on tour across Germany. Wherever he was invited, he delivered the same lecture on new quantum mechanics. Over time, his chauffeur grew to know it by heart: ‘It has to be boring giving...
Sardanapalus (/ˌsɑːrdəˈnæpələs/; sometimes spelled Sardanapallus) was, according to the Greek writer Ctesias, the last king of Assyria, although in actuality Ashur-uballit II (612–605 BC) holds that distinction. Ctesias' book Persica is lost, but we know of its contents by later compilations and from the work...
Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him,...
One day it happened: I was in Jaipur and a man came in the morning to see me, and he said, "You are divine. " I said, "You are right!" He was sitting there and another man came and he was very much against me, and then...
One of those dread evils which spread terror far and wide, and which Heaven, in its anger, ordains for the punishment of wickedness upon earth - a plague in fact; and so dire a one as to make rich in one day that grim ferryman...
[…] Thus week by week the prisoners of plague put up what fight they could. Some, like Rambert, even contrived to fancy they were still behaving as free men and had the power of choice. But actually it would have been truer to say that by...
There was once a house that was overrun with Mice. A Cat heard of this, and said to herself, "That's the place for me," and off she went and took up her quarters in the house, and caught the Mice one by one and ate...
By a peculiar weakness of human nature, people generally think too much about the opinion which others form of them; although the slightest reflection will show that this opinion, whatever it may be, is not in itself essential to happiness. Therefore it is hard to...
