By Heart

(Daily prompt) You’re asked to recite a poem (or song lyrics) from memory — what’s the first one that comes to mind? Does it have a special meaning, or is there another reason it has stayed, intact, in your mind?

This poem by Rudyard Kipling is one of my favourites and comes to mind when I thought of the daily prompt.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling

Other interesting posts in this category:
1) http://nkykate.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/lyrical-lyrics-beyonces-halo-always-on-my-lips/
2) http://evolvingruminations.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/poem-on-my-mind/
3) http://christopherblack2012.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/by-heart/
4) http://avatarofmrbean.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/raindrops-on-roses/
5) http://endeavoury.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/by-heart/
6) http://mirthandmotivation.com/2014/11/05/by-heart-im-wishing-on-a-star/
7) http://karenghaly.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/its-all-coming-back-to-me/
8) http://kimaedwards.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/daily-prompt-by-heart/
9) http://normashilpi.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/the-road-not-taken/
10) http://ripplesnreflectiontimes.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/by-heart/

Advertisement

Love to love you

What do you love most about yourself? What do you love most about your favorite person? Are the two connected?
Photographers, artists, poets: show us LOVE.

All your life
We were the centre of your universe
How can I describe love
Patient, selfless, sincere?

The day I heard you speak
Tears streamed from my eyes
How can I describe love
Innocent, bright, wondrous?

The magic of your creation
Bewildering, Unfathomable
How can I describe love
Inspiring, Overwhelming, bliss

Shaking order into random motion
Blending art into my logic
Bringing music into mundane routine
Complementing the voids

Trying to define love
Is shining a candle to the sun
Lifting the veil of ignorance
Lead me into your light

© copyright, skm, 18th Nov 2013

Other interesting posts in this category:
1) http://ayimas.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/mother-daughter-love/
2) http://heymissadventures.com/501/
3) http://anawnimiss.wordpress.com/2013/10/25/of-togetherness/
4) http://runninginto30.com/true-love/
5) http://crowarrowinc.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/daily-prompt-love-to-love-you/
6) http://jacquelinebrinkman.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/love-to-love-you-learning-to-love-myself/
7) http://zainabjavid.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/my-love-my-son/
8) http://contemplatinglove.com/2013/11/17/love-to-love-you/
9) http://basicallybeyondbasic.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/daily-prompt-love-to-love-you/
10) http://mbcoudal.com/2013/11/17/talking-transitions/

 

On The Road

If you could pause real life and spend some time living with a family anywhere in the world, where would you go?
Photographers, artists, poets: show us TRAVELS.

 

I have a long list of favourite destinations to visit and if I were to select a country where I could spend some time with a family it would be Spain first and then France.

I am in awe of the Spanish people – their high energy, enthusiasm and bubbly nature. I would love to soak in the culture and learn more about their ways of life.

France is another favourite destination for me because I learnt French in school and about the wonderful places and food but have yet to experience it first hand.

Ofcourse there are a lot of places I would also love to visit in my home country India – like Rajasthan,  Assam, Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Agra etc.

So – some day I would love to pack my bags and head down to these destinations.

 

Other interesting posts in this category:
1) http://underthemonkeytree.com/2013/09/30/daily-prompt-on-the-road/
2) http://thiscornerofthewoods.com/2013/09/30/daily-prompt-on-the-road-photography/
3) http://helenmeikle.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/daily-post-where-in-the-world/
4) http://creativityarise.com/2013/09/30/daily-prompt-on-the-road-to-greece-i-go/
5) http://silverleafjournal.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/off-the-road/
6) http://zainabjavid.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/world-tour/
7) http://calmbluesea.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/dont-let-it-slip/
8) http://lifebeinggirly.com/2013/09/30/daily-prompt-on-the-road/
9) http://vosperdruiter.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/living-in-a-teletubby-house-in-spain/
10)http://brokenlightcollective.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/blossoming-in-korea/

 

12 websites that I like

Some of the websites that I like to access frequently are Google as a search engine , mail, maps , Youtube and numerous other products and services.  I access twitter almost daily as a micro-blogging platform to post 140 character tweets.  For blogging, I prefer to use WordPress which I find very user –friendly.

For technology related news and content I prefer mashable and also access pcworld and cnet.  I love to access Dictionary.com for their ‘word of the day’, thesaurus etc.  For my everyday supply of office humour I go to Dilbert.

National Geographic is a great site for information on animals and the environment.  Boston Globe – The Big Picture has a collection of great photographs from around  the world published weekly.

For great talks on Technology and Design , the TED site is a useful resource.  For a professional social networking tool, I access Linkedin.

Quora is an interesting question and answer platform  and Pinterest is also a social media site where you can repin theme-based image collections on hobbies, interests etc

Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging  service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, known as “tweets”. It was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with over 140 million active users as of 2012, generating over 340 million tweets daily and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day
http://www.twitter.com

Mashable (Mashable Inc.) is a Scottish-American news website and Internet news blog founded by Pete Cashmore. The website’s primary focus is social media news, but also covers news and developments in mobile, entertainment, online video, business, web development, technology, memes and gadgets. Mashable was launched by Pete Cashmore from his home in Aberdeen, Scotland in July 2005.
With a reported 50+ million monthly pageviewsand an Alexa ranking under 250, Mashable ranks as one of the world’s largest websites.
http://www.mashable.com

Google Inc. is an American multinational corporation which provides Internet-related products and services, including Internet search, cloud computing, software and advertising technologies. The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while both attended Stanford University. The company offers online productivity software including email, an office suite, Youtube videos and social networking.. Google leads the development of the Android mobile OS, as well as the Google Chrome OS browser-only operating system.
http://www.google.com

WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and a dynamic content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL and . It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is currently the most popular CMS in use on the Internet.It was first released on May 27, 2003, by Matt Mullenweg.
http://www.wordpress.com

Dilbert  is an American comic strip written and drawn by Scott Adams. First published on April 16, 1989; 23 years ago Dilbert is known for its satirical office humour about a white-collar, micromanaged office featuring the engineer Dilbert as the title character. The strip has spawned several books, an animated television series, a video game, and hundreds of Dilbert-themed merchandise items.. Dilbert appears in 2000 newspapers worldwide in 65 countries and 25 languages
http://www.dilbert.com/

Boston Globe – The Big picture:  Some of the best news photographs from around the world
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/

Dictionary Reference.com is an  encyclopedia, thesaurus and dictionary online.  The site also provides machine translation and web search. Reference.com was launched by InReference, Inc in February, 1997. Lexico announced that Reference.com would begin offering searches of Wikipedia content. In mid-2007, the site typically ranked in the mid-200s among the most popular websites on the Internet
http://dictionary.reference.com/

Pinterest is a pinboard-style social photo sharing  website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, hobbies, and more. Users can browse other pinboards for inspiration, ‘re-pin’ images to their own collections and/or ‘like’ photos. Pinterest’s mission is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting via a global platform of inspiration and idea sharing.
http://www.pinterest.com

Quora was co-founded by two former Facebook employees, Adam D’Angelo  and Charlie Cheever  is a question and answer platform created, edited and organized by its community of users.
http://www.quora.com

National Geographic provides free maps, photos, videos and daily news stories, as well as articles and features about animals, the environment, cultures, history etc
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/

TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate “ideas worth spreading.” TED was founded in 1984 as a one-off event and the conference was held annually from 1990 in Monterey, California.  The speakers are given a maximum of 18 minutes to present their ideas in the most innovative and engaging ways they can.
http://www.ted.com/

LinkedIn is a professional social networking website founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. It was founded by Reid Hoffman.
http://www.linkedin.com/

What are some of your favourite websites?

Day 12 — My favorite song to dance and sing to when no one is looking…

 

 

Written by Max Martin and Denniz PoP, “Everybody” is one of the Backstreet Boys’ most successful singles to date, reaching #4 in the USBillboard Hot 100, running 22 weeks, and #3 in the UK Singles . It is certified platinum in the United States with 2.1 million sales.  It is one of their signature songs .  I love this song because it is very catchy.

My favourite poems

These are 20 of my favourite poets and their poems (I’ve attached a link to my favourites).   Which are  your favourite poems?

1)Robert Frost – The Road Not Taken : http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-road-not-taken/
2)Walt Whitman – O Captain! My Captain!: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/o-captain-my-captain/
3)Robert  Browning – The Patriot: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/patriot-the/
4)William Shakespeare – All the World’s a stage: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/all-the-world-s-a-stage/
5)John Milton – On his blindness: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/on-his-blindness/
6)William Wordsworth – Daffodils : http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/daffodils/
7)Thomas Hardy – A Kings Soliloquy: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-king-s-soliloquy-on-the-night-of-his-funeral/
8)D.H. Lawrence – On That Day: http://www.bartleby.com/128/42.html
9)W.B.Yeats – When you are Old and gray: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/when-you-are-old/
10)T.S. Eliot – The Hollow Men : http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/t__s__eliot/poems/15120
11)Rabindranath Tagore – Where the mind is without fear: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/where-the-mind-is-without-fear/
12)Percy Shelley – Time : http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/time-4/
13)John Keats – When I have fears: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/when-i-have-fears/
14)Ralph Waldo Emerson – Ode to Beauty: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ode-to-beauty/
15)Emily Bronte – Love and Friendship: http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/emily_bronte/poems/4180
16)Elizabeth Browning – How do I love thee?: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/how-do-i-love-thee/
17)Lewis Carroll – Solitude: http://www.kalliope.org/digt.pl?longdid=carrol2002012704
18)Rudyard Kipling – If: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/if/
19)Christina Rossetti – When I am dead , my dearest: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/when-i-am-dead-my-dearest/
20)John Donne – Death be not proud: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/death-be-not-proud/

What are some of your favourite humorous books?

Here are some good humorous reads.  I have read some long ago and am trying to read them again. Do you have any more recommendations?

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon

A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel written by John Kennedy Toole, published by LSU Press in 1980, 11 years after the author’s suicide. Toole posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981.

Catch-22 is a satirical, historical novel by the American author Joseph Heller, first published in 1961. The novel, set during the later stages of World War II from 1944 onwards, is frequently cited as one of the great literary works of the twentieth century

Three Men in a Boat published in 1889, is a humorous account by Jerome K Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford. The three men are based on Jerome himself (the narrator) and two real-life friends, George Wingrave and Carl Hentschel , with whom he often took boating trips

Lucky Jim is an academic satire written by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1954.  It was Amis’s first published novel, and won the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction. Set sometime around 1950, Lucky Jim follows the exploits of the eponymous James (Jim) Dixon, a reluctant Medieval history lecturer at an unnamed provincial English University

The English Teacher is a 1945 novel written by R K Narayan. This novel, dedicated to Narayan’s wife Rajam is not only autobiographical but also poignant in its intensity of feeling. The story is a series of experiences in the life of Krishna, an English teacher, and his quest towards achieving inner peace and self-development.

Bridget Jones’s Diary is a 1996 novel by Helen Fielding. Written in the form of a personal diary, the novel chronicles a year in the life of Bridget Jones, a thirty-something single working woman living in London. She writes (often humorously) about her career, self-image, vices, family, friends, and romantic relationships.

The Inimitable Jeeves is a semi-novel collecting Jeeves stories by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the UK by Herbert Jenkins, London on May 17, 1923

Naked, published in 1997, is a collection of essays by American humorist David Sedaris. The book details Sedaris’ life, from his unusual upbringing in the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina, to his booze-and-drug-ridden college years, to his Kerouacian wandering as a young adult.

The BFG (short for “Big Friendly Giant”) is a children’s book written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake, first published in 1982. The book was an expansion of a story told in Danny, the Champion of the World, an earlier Dahl book. An animated film based on the book was released in 1989

What are 10 fascinating books worth reading according to you?

I have a lot of favourite books, but here I would like to list 10 books that stand out by being fascinating.  What are your favourite reads??

1984 – George Orwell
In 1984, George Orwell warns of the terrifying dangers that man may create for
himself in his quest for a utopian society.  It warns that people might believe that everyone must become slaves to the government in order to have an orderly society, but at the expense of the freedom of the people.

Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
The book explores a dystopian United States where leading innovators, ranging from industrialists to artists, refuse to be exploited by society. In their efforts, these “men of the mind” hope to demonstrate that a world in which the individual is not free to create is doomed, that civilization cannot exist where men are slave to society and government, and that the destruction of the profit motive leads to the collapse of society. The theme of Atlas Shrugged, as Rand described it, is “the role of man’s mind in existence”.

Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Caroll
The book tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world (the Woderland of the title) populated by peculiar and anthromorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as children. It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre, and its narrative course and structure have been enormously influential, especially in the fantasygenre.

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England

Roots – Alex Haley
Alex Haley’s Roots is the monumental two-century drama of Kunta Kinte and the six generations who came after him. By tracing back his own roots, Haley tells the story of 39 million Americans of African descent.

War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events leading up to the French invasion of Russis, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of five Russian aristocratic families

Great expectations – Charles Dickens
Great Expectations is written in the first person from the point of view of the orphan Pip. The novel, like much of Dickens’ work, draws on his experiences of life and people.

The 7 habits of highly effective people – Stephen Covey
Covey presents an approach to being effective in attaining goals by aligning oneself to what he calls “true north” principles of a character ethic that he presents as universal and timeless.

The Monk who sold his Ferrari – Robin Sharma
“The monk who sold his Ferrari” is a tale, which provides an approach to living a simple life with greater balance, strength, courage and abundance of joy.  A wonderfully crafted fable, this story tells the extraordinary story of Julian Mantle, a lawyer forced to confront the spiritual crisis of his out-of-balance life.

The God of small things – Arundhati Roy
It is a story about the childhood experiences of a pair of fraternal twins whose lives are destroyed by the “Love Laws” that lay down “who must be loved, and how, and how much”. The book is a description of how the small things in life affect people’s behavior and their lives.

For further discussion here is an interesting link: http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-potentially-life-changing-books