The proverbial expression Set a thief to catch a thief is traced to a play published in 1665, where it is described as an ‘old saying.’ According to the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, another remark ‘Being a thief myself, I recognised the tracks of a thief,’ attributed to the classical Greek Writer Callimachus (310-240 BC)…
The old saying “Man doesn’t live by bread alone” may not convincingly impress people at large that they need much more than bread itself (the term bread representing all that we consume as food, both for pleasure and to keep soul and body together). Further, the expression “Man shalln’t live by bread alone,” attributed to…
Mankind has proceeded too far and too deep in the matter of minimising sweat and toil to satisfy the various needs in daily life as well as chasing convenience in virtually every sphere of human activity. The push-button itch is too hard to get rid of. While invention of the wheel by an unknown human,…
Magic shows, particularly those performed before gullible assembly of people anywhere, anytime and magicians are always a great hit keeping both kids and adults glued to their seats. The famous postulate of economics namely The law of diminishing marginal utility (stating that as a person increases consumption of a product, at one go, while keeping…
The land has hosted many legendary scholars, savants, sages, saints, philosophers, chroniclers and countless number of common people who have walked across its vast territory in the distant past during times when walking was the only option to reach places fired up by an undaunted spirit of exploration. We are now reading about their exploits…
Many a scourge has tormented the earthlings over centuries taking toll of lives in numbers hard to determine. As if adding insult to injury, the human species has not lagged behind to hurt themselves in small measure by fighting wars for pride and gain, as recorded in history. Neither occurrence of afflictions nor wars is…
Just to keep the democracy of the country going, mostly as a show piece, public funds amounting to God-knows-how-many-thousand-crore rupees are blown away once in five years in the general elections to the Parliament as well as State Legislatures, apart from a few lakh smaller units of administration namely City Municipal Corporations, Town Municipalities and…
Given the mounting numbers and nature of problems being faced by people as individuals, society as a community, governments as custodians of administration and, last but not the least, the nation as a country of relentlessly expanding population with diversity that no other country in the world hosts, it is presumptuous to feel complacent about…
The simplest advisory ‘Eat to live, don’t live to eat,’ that is not heard often nowadays, cannot be surpassed for its power of wisdom guiding one to go on a journey of healthy life spanning the full distance of four score and twenty (one hundred years). The expression, attributed to Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), noted American…
Sayings such as ‘Home is the first school for the child’ and ‘Mother is the child’s first teacher’ have become cliché in our times. The profile of the typical Indian home, as is being explained to the children in primary school, hosting large joint families, must be making the children already wonder about the difference…
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