Thursday, February 28, 2019

David and Goliath (by Malcolm Gladwell)




At the heart of ancient Palestine is the region known as the Shephelah, a series of ridges and valleys connecting the Judaean Mountains to the east with the wide, flat expanse of the Mediterranean plain. It is an area of breathtaking beauty, home to vineyards and wheat fields and forests of sycamore and terebinth. It is also of great strategic importance.

Over the centuries, numerous battles have been fought for control of the region because the valleys rising from the Mediterranean plain offer those on the coast a clear path to the cities of Hebron, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem in the Judaean highlands. The most important valley is Aijalon, in the north. But the most storied is the Elah. The Elah was where Saladin faced off against the Knights of the Crusades in the twelfth century. It played a central role in the Maccabean wars with Syria more than a thousand years before that, and, most famously, during the days of the Old Testament, it was where the fledgling Kingdom of Israel squared off against the armies of the Philistines.

The Philistines were from Crete. They were a seafaring people who had moved to Palestine and settled along the coast. The Israelites were clustered in the mountains, under the leadership of King Saul. In the second half of the eleventh century BCE, the Philistines began moving east, winding their way upstream along the floor of the Elah Valley. Their goal was to capture the mountain ridge near Bethlehem and split Saul’s kingdom in two. The Philistines were battle-tested and dangerous, and the sworn enemies of the Israelites. Alarmed, Saul gathered his men and hastened down from the mountains to confront them.

The Philistines set up camp along the southern ridge of the Elah. The Israelites pitched their tents on the other side, along the northern ridge, which left the two armies looking across the ravine at each other. Neither dared to move. To attack meant descending down the hill and then making a suicidal climb up the enemy’s ridge on the other side. Finally, the Philistines had enough. They sent their greatest warrior down into the valley to resolve the deadlock one on one.

He was a giant, six foot nine at least, wearing a bronze helmet and full body armor. He carried a javelin, a spear, and a sword. An attendant preceded him, carrying a large shield. The giant faced the Israelites and shouted out: “Choose you a man and let him come down to me! If he prevail in battle against me and strike me down, we shall be slaves to you. But if I prevail and strike him down, you will be slaves to us and serve us.”

In the Israelite camp, no one moved. Who could win against such a terrifying opponent? Then, a shepherd boy who had come down from Bethlehem to bring food to his brothers stepped forward and volunteered. Saul objected: “You cannot go against this Philistine to do battle with him, for you are a lad and he is a man of war from his youth.” But the shepherd was adamant. He had faced more ferocious opponents than this, he argued. “When the lion or the bear would come and carry off a sheep from the herd,” he told Saul, “I would go after him and strike him down and rescue it from his clutches.” Saul had no other options. He relented, and the shepherd boy ran down the hill toward the giant standing in the valley. “Come to me, that I may give your flesh to the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the field,” the giant cried out when he saw his opponent approach. Thus began one of history’s most famous battles. The giant’s name was Goliath. The shepherd boy’s name was David.

David and Goliath is a book about what happens when ordinary people confront giants. By “giants,” I mean powerful opponents of all kinds—from armies and mighty warriors to disability, misfortune, and oppression. Each chapter tells the story of a different person—famous or unknown, ordinary or brilliant—who has faced an outsize challenge and been forced to respond. Should I play by the rules or follow my own instincts? Shall I persevere or give up? Should I strike back or forgive?

Through these stories, I want to explore two ideas. The first is that much of what we consider valuable in our world arises out of these kinds of lopsided conflicts, because the act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty. And second, that we consistently get these kinds of conflicts wrong. We misread them. We misinterpret them. Giants are not what we think they are.

The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness. And the fact of being an underdog can change people in ways that we often fail to appreciate: it can open doors and create opportunities and educate and enlighten and make possible what might otherwise have seemed unthinkable. We need a better guide to facing giants—and there is no better place to start that journey than with the epic confrontation between David and Goliath three thousand years ago in the Valley of Elah.

When Goliath shouted out to the Israelites, he was asking for what was known as “single combat.” This was a common practice in the ancient world. Two sides in a conflict would seek to avoid the heavy bloodshed of open battle by choosing one warrior to represent each in a duel. For example, the first-century BCE Roman historian Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius tells of an epic battle in which a Gaul warrior began mocking his Roman opponents. “This immediately aroused the great indignation of one Titus Manlius, a youth of the highest birth,” Quadrigarius writes. Titus challenged the Gaul to a duel:

He stepped forward, and would not suffer Roman valour to be shamefully tarnished by a Gaul. Armed with a legionary’s shield and a Spanish sword, he confronted the Gaul. Their fight took place on the very bridge [over the Anio River] in the presence of both armies, amid great apprehension. Thus they confronted each other: the Gaul, according to his method of fighting, with shield advanced and awaiting an attack; Manlius, relying on courage rather than skill, struck shield against shield and threw the Gaul off balance. While the Gaul was trying to regain the same position, Manlius again struck shield against shield and again forced the man to change his ground. In this fashion he slipped under the Gaul’s sword and stabbed him in the chest with his Spanish blade. After he had slain him, Manlius cut off the Gaul’s head, tore off his tongue and put it, covered as it was with blood, around his own neck.

This is what Goliath was expecting—a warrior like himself to come forward for hand-to-hand combat. It never occurred to him that the battle would be fought on anything other than those terms, and he prepared accordingly. To protect himself against blows to the body, he wore an elaborate tunic made up of hundreds of overlapping bronze fishlike scales. It covered his arms and reached to his knees and probably weighed more than a hundred pounds. He had bronze shin guards protecting his legs, with attached bronze plates covering his feet. He wore a heavy metal helmet. He had three separate weapons, all optimized for close combat. He held a thrusting javelin made entirely of bronze, which was capable of penetrating a shield or even armor. He had a sword on his hip. And as his primary option, he carried a special kind of short-range spear with a metal shaft as “thick as a weaver’s beam.” It had a cord attached to it and an elaborate set of weights that allowed it to be released with extraordinary force and accuracy. As the historian Moshe Garsiel writes, “To the Israelites, this extraordinary spear, with its heavy shaft plus long and heavy iron blade, when hurled by Goliath’s strong arm, seemed capable of piercing any bronze shield and bronze armor together.”

Can you see why no Israelite would come forward to fight Goliath?

Then David appears. Saul tries to give him his own sword and armor so at least he’ll have a fighting chance. David refuses. “I cannot walk in these,” he says, “for I am unused to it.” Instead he reaches down and picks up five smooth stones, and puts them in his shoulder bag. Then he descends into the valley, carrying his shepherd’s staff. Goliath looks at the boy coming toward him and is insulted. He was expecting to do battle with a seasoned warrior. Instead he sees a shepherd—a boy from one of the lowliest of all professions—who seems to want to use his shepherd’s staff as a cudgel against Goliath’s sword. “Am I a dog,” Goliath says, gesturing at the staff, “that you should come to me with sticks?”

What happens next is a matter of legend. David puts one of his stones into the leather pouch of a sling, and he fires at Goliath’s exposed forehead. Goliath falls, stunned. David runs toward him, seizes the giant’s sword, and cuts off his head. “The Philistines saw that their warrior was dead,” the biblical account reads, “and they fled.” The battle is won miraculously by an underdog who, by all expectations, should not have won at all. This is the way we have told one another the story over the many centuries since. It is how the phrase “David and Goliath” has come to be embedded in our language—as a metaphor for improbable victory. And the problem with that version of the events is that almost everything about it is wrong.

Ancient armies had three kinds of warriors. The first was cavalry—armed men on horseback or in chariots. The second was infantry—foot soldiers wearing armor and carrying swords and shields. The third were projectile warriors, or what today would be called artillery: archers and, most important, slingers. Slingers had a leather pouch attached on two sides by a long strand of rope. They would put a rock or a lead ball into the pouch, swing it around in increasingly wider and faster circles, and then release one end of the rope, hurling the rock forward.

Slinging took an extraordinary amount of skill and practice. But in experienced hands, the sling was a devastating weapon. Paintings from medieval times show slingers hitting birds in midflight. Irish slingers were said to be able to hit a coin from as far away as they could see it, and in the Old Testament Book of Judges, slingers are described as being accurate within a “hair’s breadth.” An experienced slinger could kill or seriously injure a target at a distance of up to two hundred yards. The Romans even had a special set of tongs made just to remove stones that had been embedded in some poor soldier’s body by a sling. Imagine standing in front of a Major League Baseball pitcher as he aims a baseball at your head. That’s what facing a slinger was like—only what was being thrown was not a ball of cork and leather but a solid rock.

The historian Baruch Halpern argues that the sling was of such importance in ancient warfare that the three kinds of warriors balanced one another, like each gesture in the game of rock, paper, scissors. With their long pikes and armor, infantry could stand up to cavalry. Cavalry could, in turn, defeat projectile warriors, because the horses moved too quickly for artillery to take proper aim. And projectile warriors were deadly against infantry, because a big lumbering soldier, weighed down with armor, was a sitting duck for a slinger who was launching projectiles from a hundred yards away. “This is why the Athenian expedition to Sicily failed in the Peloponnesian War,” Halpern writes. “Thucydides describes at length how Athens’s heavy infantry was decimated in the mountains by local light infantry, principally using the sling.” Goliath is heavy infantry. He thinks that he is going to be engaged in a duel with another heavyinfantryman, in the same manner as Titus Manlius’s fight with the Gaul. When he says, “Come to me, that I may give your flesh to the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the field,” the key phrase is “come to me.” He means come right up to me so that we can fight at close quarters. When Saul tries to dress David in armor and give him a sword, he is operating under the same assumption. He assumes David is going to fight Goliath hand to hand.

David, however, has no intention of honoring the rituals of single combat. When he tells Saul that he has killed bears and lions as a shepherd, he does so not just as testimony to his courage but to make another point as well: that he intends to fight Goliath the same way he has learned to fight wild animals—as a projectile warrior. He runs toward Goliath, because without armor he has speed and maneuverability. He puts a rock into his sling, and whips it around and around, faster and faster at six or seven revolutions per second, aiming his projectile at Goliath’s forehead—the giant’s only point of vulnerability. Eitan Hirsch, a ballistics expert with the Israeli Defense Forces, recently did a series of calculations showing that a typical-size stone hurled by an expert slinger at a distance of thirty-five meters would have hit Goliath’s head with a velocity of thirty-four meters per second—more than enough to penetrate his skull and render him unconscious or dead. In terms of stopping power, that is equivalent to a fair-size modern handgun. “We find,” Hirsch writes, “that David could have slung and hit Goliath in little more than one second—a time so brief that Goliath would not have been able to protect himself and during which he would be stationary for all practical purposes.” What could Goliath do? He was carrying over a hundred pounds of armor. He was prepared for a battle at close range, where he could stand, immobile, warding off blows with his armor and delivering a mighty thrust of his spear. He watched David approach, first with scorn, then with surprise, and then with what can only have been horror—as it dawned on him that the battle he was expecting had suddenly changed shape.

“You come against me with sword and spear and javelin,” David said to Goliath, “but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord, and he will give all of you into our hands.”

Twice David mentions Goliath’s sword and spear, as if to emphasize how profoundly different his intentions are. Then he reaches into his shepherd’s bag for a stone, and at that point no one watching from the ridges on either side of the valley would have considered David’s victory improbable. David was a slinger, and slingers beat infantry, hands down. “Goliath had as much chance against David,” the historian Robert Dohrenwend writes, “as any Bronze Age warrior with a sword would have had against an [opponent] armed with a .45 automatic pistol.”


Excerpt taken from book: "David and Goliath" by Malcolm Gladwell

Tuesday, February 26, 2019

What is Index Fund?



What it is:

Index funds are mutual funds that are designed to track the performance of a particular index. For example, ICICI Prudential Nifty Index Fund tracks the index Nifty 50.

How it works (Example):

When an investor purchases a share of an index fund, he or she is purchasing a share of a portfolio that contains the securities in an underlying index. The index fund holds the securities in the same proportion as they occur in the actual index, and when the index decreases in value, the fund's shares decrease as well, and vice versa. The only time an index buys or sells a stock is when the index itself changes (either in weighting or in composition).
The performance of an index fund usually does not exactly match the actual index's performance. This is because index funds charge management fees, which eat into returns, and because the fund's weighting in particular securities may not perfectly match the weighting of the securities in the actual index. The degree to which the fund and the index returns differ is called tracking error.

Though in theory, index fund is not supposed to charge any fee.

Why it Matters:

Index funds are a popular way to participate in the stock market and diversify a portfolio. Index funds have several major advantages over direct ownership of the underlying securities. Here's a brief review:
1. Diversification
2. Low cost
3. Liquidity
4. Dividends
5. Choices
6. Returns

References:
1. https://investinganswers.com/financial-dictionary/mutual-fundsetfs/index-fund-972

Sunday, February 24, 2019

Christine Lagarde (Women in leadership)



Christine Madeleine Odette Lagarde

A French lawyer and politician currently serving as the Managing Director (MD) and Chairwoman of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since July 2011. She has not resisted from taking the world’s strongest governments head on, in order to defend the charter of IMF.

Lagarde grew up as a French bourgeoisie, complete with synchronized-swimming practices and Girl Scout experiences. Despite her strong French background – Lagarde grew up in a traditional, Catholic home in Normandy – she speaks fluent and idiomatic English and is quite familiar with American issues.

Lagarde has said, increasing the proportion of women in prominent business and finance industry jobs could raise economic dynamism and shift firms into thinking about the long-term future of the planet.

One of her famous quotes - “It’s also about having enough confidence in yourself to distance yourself from negative comments and condescension...It’s also helpful to have a sense of humour.

"You need to forge alliances [in the workplace]... you need to find people to support you, and they don’t have to be female."

Under her tenure, the IMF has navigated the eurozone debt crisis, managed emerging market risks and the threat of a U.S. trade war with China.

The first law firm she interviewed with, told her she would never be a partner because she was a woman.
Christine stands tall at 6+ ft, and is a strict vegetarian, doesn't drink alcohol, practices yoga. She is a regular at the gym and plays tennis.

"Grit your teeth and smile that’s how you get on with it.”

Her Wikipedia page says as of 20210603:
Christine Madeleine Odette Lagarde (French: born 1 January 1956) is a French politician, businessperson and lawyer serving as President of the European Central Bank since 1 November 2019. Between July 2011 and September 2019, she served as Chair and Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Lagarde previously held various senior ministerial posts in the Government of France: she was Minister of Commerce (2005–2007), Minister of Agriculture and Fishing (2007) and Minister of the Economy, Finance and Industry (2007–2011). Lagarde was the first woman to become finance minister of a G8 economy and is the first woman to head both the ECB and the IMF. A noted antitrust and labour lawyer, Lagarde was the first female Chair of major international law firm Baker & McKenzie, between 1999 and 2004. On 16 November 2009, the Financial Times ranked her the best finance minister in the Eurozone.

On 5 July 2011, Lagarde replaced Dominique Strauss-Kahn as Managing Director of the IMF for a five-year term. Her appointment was the 11th consecutive appointment of a European to head the IMF. She was reelected by consensus for a second five-year term, starting 5 July 2016, being the only candidate nominated for the post. In December 2016, a French court found her guilty of negligence relating to her role in the Bernard Tapie arbitration, but did not impose a penalty. In 2019 and again in 2020, Forbes ranked her number two on its World's 100 Most Powerful Women list.

Tags: Politics,Management,

Saturday, February 23, 2019

Slow Dance (by David L Weatherford)



Have you ever watched kids on a merry-go-round,
or listened to rain slapping the ground?

Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight,
or gazed at the sun fading into the night?

You better slow down, don't dance so fast,
time is short, the music won't last.


Do you run through each day on the fly,
when you ask "How are you?", do you hear the reply?

When the day is done, do you lie in your bed,
with the next hundred chores running through your head?

You better slow down, don't dance so fast,
time is short, the music won't last.


Ever told your child, we'll do it tomorrow,
and in your haste, not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch, let a friendship die,
'cause you never had time to call and say hi?

You better slow down, don't dance so fast,
time is short, the music won't last.


When you run so fast to get somewhere,
you miss half the fun of getting there.

When you worry and hurry through your day,
it's like an unopened gift thrown away.

Life isn't a race, so take it slower,
hear the music before your song is over.

Poem by: David L. Weatherford

Wednesday, February 20, 2019

Sense and Sensibility (by Jane Austen) - Highlights



Characters

Elinor Dashwood is a fictional character and the protagonist of Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility. In this novel, Austen analyses the conflict between the opposing temperaments of sense, and sensibility.
Age: 19
Sibling(s): John Dashwood (half-brother); Marianne Dashwood; Margaret Dashwood
Significant other: Edward Ferrars

-----------------------------

Colonel Brandon
Colonel Brandon is a fictional character in Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility. A quiet and reserved man, he forms an attachment to the younger of the Dashwood sisters, Marianne.
Age: 36
Sibling(s): Elder brother (deceased); Sister (in Avignon)
Significant other: Marianne Dashwood

-----------------------------

Marianne Dashwood
The 16-year-old second daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Dashwood, she embodies the "sensibility" of the title, as opposed to her elder sister Elinor's "sense".
Age: 16 at beginning of novel
Parent: Mrs. Dashwood
Significant other: Colonel Brandon

-----------------------------

John Willoughby
He is described as being a handsome young man with a small estate, but has expectations of inheriting his aunt's large estate.

-----------------------------

Edward Ferrars
Edward Ferrars is a fictional character in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. He is the elder of Fanny Dashwood's two brothers and forms an attachment to Elinor Dashwood.
Age: 23
Significant other: Elinor Dashwood

-----------------------------

Lucy Steele

Significant other: Robert Ferrars

Lucy Ferrars (née Steele) is a character in Sense and Sensibility. She is married to Robert Ferrars, but was engaged to Edward Ferrars for quite a long time. She is the younger sister of Anne Steele, and sister-in-law to Edward Ferrars and Fanny Dashwood.

-----------------------------

Mrs. Jennings is a character in Sense and Sensibility. She has two daughters, Lady Middleton and Mrs. Palmer. Through her children, she has two sons in-law, Sir John Middleton and Mr. Palmer. Both of her daughters married exceedingly well, and their husbands are wealthy gentlemen.

Mrs. Jennings was a bit of a meddler and took an active interest in the romantic lives of young people, especially Elinor and Marianne, much to their particular chagrin.

-----------------------------

Mrs. Henry Dashwood is a character in Sense and Sensibility. She was married to Henry Dashwood before she became his widow. She has three daughters, Elinor Dashwood Ferrars, Marianne Dashwood Brandon, and Margaret Dashwood. She has one stepson, John Dashwood, and is the mother-in-law of Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon. She is 40 years old at the beginning of the novel. She is a cousin of Sir John Middleton.

-----------------------------

Margaret Dashwood is a major character in Sense and Sensibility. She is the youngest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Dashwood. She has two older sisters, Elinor and Marianne. She has an elder half brother, John Dashwood. She is a sister-in-law of Edward Ferrars, Colonel Brandon, and Fanny Dashwood. She is an aunt of Harry Dashwood. She is thirteen at the beginning of the book.

-----------------------------

Henry Dashwood is a minor character in Sense and Sensibility. He was the head of the Dashwood family of Norland Park in Sussex[1]. Before his death, he was married to Mrs. Dashwood[2]. He had one son, John Dashwood, from a previous marriage. He had three daughters, Elinor Dashwood, Marianne Dashwood, and Margaret Dashwood from the current Mrs. Henry Dashwood. He cared for his second wife and daughters more than he cared for his son[1].

"The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so unjust, nor so ungrateful, to leave his estate from his nephew; but he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife and daughters than for himself or his son; but to his son, and his son's son, it was secured, in such a way, as to leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate, or by any sale of its valuable woods."
—Sense and Sensibility[3]

-----------------------------

John Dashwood is a character in Sense and Sensibility. He is the only son and heir of Mr. Henry Dashwood and his first wife[1]. He is the stepson of Mrs. Henry Dashwood and the elder half-brother of Elinor Dashwood, Marianne Dashwood, and Margaret Dashwood. He is the brother-in-law of Edward Ferrars, Robert Ferrars, and Colonel Brandon. He is married to Frances Dashwood and has one son, Harry Dashwood.

-----------------------------

Frances "Fanny" Dashwood (née Ferrars) is the wife of John Dashwood. She is the only sister of Edward and Robert Ferrars. She is the sister-in-law of Elinor Dashwood, Marianne Dashwood, and Margaret Dashwood. She has one son, Harry Dashwood, whom she spoils. Her mother, Mrs. Ferrars is still living, although her father is not.

-----------------------------

Lady Middleton (née Jennings) is a minor character in Sense and Sensibility. She is married to Sir John Middleton of Barton Park, a very wealthy and generous man. She has four children and is around 26 or 27.
-----------------------------

Sir John Middleton is a minor character in Sense and Sensibility. He is married to Lady Middleton, the daughter of Mrs. Jennings. He is wealthy and resides mostly at Barton Park, his family estate. He is about 40 at the beginning of the novel. He has four children, the eldest of which is a son of six years of age. The boy is also his heir.

-----------------------------

Mr. Palmer
Mr. Palmer is a rather serious man married to a rather silly young woman, and he's never quite recovered from this fact. We don't know much about Mr. Palmer, but what we do know paints a somewhat comical, contradictory picture. First of all, our first impressions of him are of a rude, sardonic, disinterested man, who seems to despise everyone else under the sun. However, as we get to know him a little better, we start to warm up to him.

His muttered comments are often quite funny, and on the inside, it turns out that he's not such a boor. As Elinor notes late in the book, Mr. Palmer is actually just a man – he puts on his show of gruffness towards everyone else simply as a declaration of his gender. In reality, he shows a softer side once everyone's visiting his home at Cleveland; he's genuinely concerned about Marianne's illness, and he also reveals that he sincerely cares for his family.

-----------------------------

Mrs. Ferrars is a minor character in Sense and Sensibility. She is the mother of Fanny Dashwood, Edward Ferrars, and Robert Ferrars. She is the mother-in-law of John Dashwood, Elinor Dashwood Ferrars, and Lucy Steele. She has one grandchild, Harry Dashwood, so far.

She is portrayed as a bad-tempered, unsympathetic woman who embodies all the foibles demonstrated in Fanny and Robert's characteristics. She is determined that her sons should marry well, even though the late Mr. Ferrars left them a fortune.

-----------------------------

Robert Ferrars is a character in Sense and Sensibility. By the end of the novel, he is married to Lucy Steele, the ex-fiancée of his elder brother Edward. He is the younger son of Mr. and Mrs. Ferrars, and brother of Edward Ferrars and Fanny Dashwood. He is brother-in-law to John Dashwood, Anne Steele, and Elinor Dashwood Ferrars.

-----------------------------

Plot

Henry Dashwood, his second wife, and their three daughters live for many years with Henry's wealthy bachelor uncle at Norland Park, a large country estate in Sussex. That uncle decides, in late life, to will the use and income only of his property first to Henry, then to Henry's first son John Dashwood (by his first marriage), so that the property should pass intact to John's three-year-old son Harry. The uncle dies, but Henry lives just a year after that and he is unable in such short time to save enough money for his wife Mrs Dashwood, and their daughters, Elinor, Marianne and Margaret, who are left only a small income. On his deathbed, Mr Henry Dashwood extracts a promise from his son John to take care of his half-sisters. But before Henry is long in the grave, John's greedy wife, Fanny, persuades her husband to renege on the promise, appealing to his concerns about diminishing his own son Harry's inheritance despite the fact that John is independently wealthy thanks to his inheritance from his mother and his wife's dowry. Henry Dashwood's love for his second family is also used by Fanny to arouse her husband's jealousy and convince him not to help his sisters economically.

John and Fanny immediately move in as the new owners of Norland, while the Dashwood women are treated as unwelcome guests by a spiteful Fanny. Mrs Dashwood seeks somewhere else to live. In the meantime, Fanny's brother, Edward Ferrars visits Norland and soon forms an attachment with Elinor. Fanny disapproves of the match and offends Mrs Dashwood by implying that Elinor must be motivated by his expectations of coming into money.

Mrs Dashwood moves her family to Barton Cottage in Devonshire, near the home of her cousin, Sir John Middleton. Their new home is modest, but they are warmly received by Sir John and welcomed into local society, meeting his wife, Lady Middleton, his mother-in-law, the garrulous but well-meaning Mrs Jennings, and his friend, Colonel Brandon. Colonel Brandon is attracted to Marianne, and Mrs Jennings teases them about it. Marianne is not pleased, as she considers the thirty-five-year-old Colonel Brandon an old bachelor, incapable of falling in love or inspiring love in anyone.


A 19th-century illustration by Hugh Thomson showing Willoughby cutting a lock of Marianne's hair
While out for a walk, Marianne gets caught in the rain, slips, and sprains her ankle. The dashing John Willoughby sees the accident and assists her, picking her up and carrying her back to her home. After his rescue of her, Marianne quickly comes to admire his good looks and his similar tastes in poetry, music, art, and love. His attentions, and Marianne's behaviour, lead Elinor and Mrs Dashwood to suspect that the couple are secretly engaged. Elinor cautions Marianne against her unguarded conduct, but Marianne refuses to check her emotions. Willoughby engages in several intimate activities with Marianne, including taking her to see the home he expects to inherit one day and obtaining a lock of her hair. When an engagement, or at least the announcement of one, seems imminent, Mr Willoughby informs the Dashwoods that his aunt, upon whom he is financially dependent, is sending him to London on business, indefinitely. Marianne is distraught and abandons herself to her sorrow.

Edward Ferrars pays a short visit to Barton Cottage but seems unhappy. Elinor fears that he no longer has feelings for her, but she will not show her heartache. After Edward departs, the sisters Anne and Lucy Steele, who are vulgar cousins of Mrs. Jennings, come to stay at Barton Park. Lucy informs Elinor in confidence of her secret four-year engagement to Edward Ferrars that started when he was studying with her uncle, and she displays proof of their intimacy. Elinor realises that Lucy's visit and revelations are the result of Lucy's jealousy and cunning calculation, and it helps her to understand Edward's recent sadness and behaviour towards her. She acquits Edward of blame and pities him for being held to a loveless engagement to Lucy by his sense of honour.

Elinor and Marianne accompany Mrs Jennings to London. On arriving, Marianne rashly writes several personal letters to Willoughby, which go unanswered. When they meet by chance at a dance, Willoughby is standing with another woman. He greets Marianne reluctantly and coldly, to her extreme distress. She shows him how shocked she is that he barely acknowledges her, and she leaves the party completely distraught. Soon Marianne receives a curt letter enclosing their former correspondence and love tokens, including a lock of her hair. Willoughby informs her of his engagement to a young lady, Miss Grey, who has a large fortune. Marianne is devastated. After Elinor has read the letter, Marianne admits to Elinor that she and Willoughby were never engaged. She behaved as if they were because she knew she loved him and thought that he loved her.

As Marianne grieves, and Willoughby's engagement to Miss Grey is made public, Colonel Brandon visits the sisters. He reveals to Elinor that Willoughby is a scoundrel. His aunt disinherited him after she learned that he had seduced, impregnated, then abandoned Brandon's young ward, Miss Eliza Williams, and refused to marry her. Willoughby, in great personal debt, chose to marry Miss Grey for money rather than love. Eliza is the illegitimate daughter of Brandon's first love, also called Eliza, a young woman who was his father's ward and an heiress. She was forced into an unhappy marriage to Brandon's elder brother, in order to shore up the family's debts, and that marriage ended in scandal and divorce while Brandon was abroad with the Army. After Colonel Brandon's father and brother died, he inherited the family estate and returned to find Eliza dying in a pauper's home, so Brandon took charge of raising her young daughter. Brandon tells Elinor that Marianne strongly reminds him of the elder Eliza for her sincerity and sweet impulsiveness. Brandon removed the younger Eliza to the country, and reveals to Elinor all of these details in the hope that Marianne could get some consolation in discovering that Willoughby was revealed as a villain.

Meanwhile, the Steele sisters have come to London as guests of Mrs Jennings. After a brief acquaintance, they are asked to stay at John and Fanny Dashwoods' London house. Lucy sees the invitation as a personal compliment, rather than what it is, a slight to Elinor and Marianne who, being family, should have received such invitation first. Too talkative, Anne Steele betrays Lucy's secret engagement to Edward Ferrars, Fanny's brother. As a result, the Misses Steele are turned out of the house, and Edward is ordered by his wealthy mother to break off the engagement on pain of disinheritance. Edward refuses to comply and is immediately disinherited in favour of his brother, Robert, which gains him respect for his conduct and sympathy from Elinor and Marianne. Colonel Brandon shows his admiration by offering Edward the living (a clergyman's income) of Delaford parsonage so that he might one day be able to afford to marry Lucy after he takes orders.

As Marianne grieves over Willoughby, Mrs Jennings takes Elinor and Marianne to the country to visit her second daughter, Mrs. Charlotte Palmer, at her husband's estate, called Cleveland. Marianne, still in misery over Willoughby's marriage, goes walking in the rain and becomes dangerously ill. She is diagnosed with putrid fever, and it is believed that her life is in danger. Elinor writes to Mrs. Dashwood to explain the gravity of the situation, and Colonel Brandon volunteers to go and bring Marianne's mother to Cleveland to be with her. In the night, Willoughby arrives and reveals to Elinor that his love for Marianne was genuine and that losing her has made him miserable. He elicits Elinor's pity because his choice has made him unhappy, but she is disgusted by the callous way in which he talks of Miss Williams and his own wife. He also reveals that his aunt said she would have forgiven him if he married Miss Williams but that he refused.

Marianne recovers from her illness, and Elinor tells her of Willoughby's visit. Marianne realises that she could never have been happy with Willoughby's immoral, erratic, and inconsiderate ways. She values Elinor's more moderated conduct with Edward and resolves to model herself after Elinor's courage and good sense. Edward arrives and reveals that, after his disinheritance, Lucy jilted him in favour of his now wealthy younger brother, Robert. Elinor is overjoyed. Edward and Elinor marry, and later Marianne marries Colonel Brandon, having gradually come to love him. The two couples live as neighbours, with both sisters and husbands in harmony with each other. Willoughby considers Marianne as his ideal but the narrator tells the reader not to suppose that he was never happy.

Quotes

“The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!”
tags: love, requirements

“If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy.”
tags: love

“Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience- or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.”
tags: follow-your-bliss, self-actualization

“I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.”

“It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.”
tags: disposition, intimacy, marianne-dashwood, openness, opportunity, self-disclosure, time

“It is not everyone,' said Elinor, 'who has your passion for dead leaves.”

“I come here with no expectations, only to profess, now that I am at liberty to do so, that my heart is and always will be...yours.”
tags: devotion, love, pronouncements-of-love

“I will be calm. I will be mistress of myself.”
tags: self-control, serenity

“I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness. [...] Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy.”
tags: shyness

“Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.”
tags: agreement, compliments, discussion, disdain, intelligence, opposition, rationality, reason 302 likes Like

“To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect”
tags: expect, expectations, hope, love, wish

“She was stronger alone…”
tags: loneliness, strength

“If a book is well written, I always find it too short.”
tags: books, reading

“Know your own happiness.”


“What do you know of my heart? What do you know of anything but your own suffering. For weeks, Marianne, I've had this pressing on me without being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature. It was forced on me by the very person whose prior claims ruined all my hope. I have endured her exultations again and again whilst knowing myself to be divided from Edward forever. Believe me, Marianne, had I not been bound to silence I could have provided proof enough of a broken heart, even for you.”
tags: classics, heartbreak, stoicism

“Always resignation and acceptance. Always prudence and honour and duty. Elinor, where is your heart?”
tags: stoicism

“There is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions.”
tags: youthful-optimism

“I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter in all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both.”
tags: literature, marianne-dashwood, sense-sensibility

“Eleanor went to her room "where she was free to think and be wretched.”
tags: heartbreak

“I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness."
tags: chapter-17, edward-ferrars, shyness

“I have not wanted syllables where actions have spoken so plainly.”


“Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for a better preparation for death.”
tags: hopelessness

“Elinor could sit still no longer. She almost ran out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy, which at first she thought would never cease.”

“to hope was to expect”
tags: wishful-thinking

“Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge."
-Elinor Dashwood”
tags: chapter-17, elinor-dashwood, sense

“She was stronger alone; and her own good sense so well supported her, that her firmness was as unshaken, her appearance of cheerfulness as invariable, as, with regrets so poignant and so fresh, it was possible for them to be.”


“..that sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself”
tags: anticipation

“I am excessively fond of a cottage; there is always so much comfort, so much elegance about them. And I protest, if I had any money to spare, I should buy a little land and build one myself, within a short distance of London, where I might drive myself down at any time, and collect a few friends about me and be happy. I advise everybody who is going to build, to build a cottage.”

“But remember that the pain of parting from friends will be felt by everybody at times, whatever be their education or state. Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience; or give it a more fascinating name: call it hope.”

References

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_and_Sensibility
  2. https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2809709-sense-and-sensibility

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Maintain your self-respect as Auma Obama did



Auma and I sat down for lunch in the outdoor cafe of the New Stanley Hotel. Just then I noticed an American family sit down a few tables away from us. Two of the African waiters immediately sprang into action, both of them smiling from one ear to the other. Since Auma and I hadn’t yet been served, I began to wave at the two waiters who remained standing by the kitchen, thinking they must have somehow failed to see us. For some time they managed to avoid my glance, but eventually an older man with sleepy eyes relented and brought us over two menus. His manner was resentful, though, and after several more minutes he showed no signs of ever coming back. Auma’s face began to pinch with anger, and again I waved to our waiter, who continued in his silence as he wrote down our orders. At this point, the Americans had already received their food and we still had no place settings. I overheard a young girl with a blond ponytail complain that there wasn’t any ketchup. Auma stood up.

“Let’s go.”

She started heading for the exit, then suddenly turned and walked back to the waiter, who was watching us with an impassive stare.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Auma said to him, her voice shaking. “You should be ashamed.”

The waiter replied brusquely in Swahili.

“I don’t care how many mouths you have to feed, you cannot treat your own people like dogs. Here…” Auma snapped open her purse and took out a crumpled hundred-shilling note. “You see!” she shouted. “I can pay for my own damn food.”

She threw the note to the ground, then marched out onto the street. For several minutes we wandered without apparent direction, until I finally suggested we sit down on a bench beside the central post office.

“You okay?” I asked her.

She nodded. “That was stupid, throwing away money like that.” She set down her purse beside her and we watched the traffic pass. “You know, I can’t go to a club in any of these hotels if I’m with another African woman,” she said eventually. “The askaris will turn us away, thinking we are prostitutes. The same in any of these big office buildings. If you don’t work there, and you are African, they will stop you until you tell them your business. But if you’re with a German friend, then they’re all smiles. ‘Good evening, miss,’ they’ll say. ‘How are you tonight?’” Auma shook her head. “That’s why Kenya, no matter what its GNP, no matter how many things you can buy here, the rest of Africa laughs. It’s the whore of Africa, Barack. It opens its legs to anyone who can pay.”

Monday, February 11, 2019

Don't Quit by John Greenleaf Whittier





When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit-
Rest if you must, but don't you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a fellow turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out.
Don't give up though the pace seems slow -
You may succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man;
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor's cup;
And he learned too late when the night came down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out -
The silver tint in the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It might be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit -
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

Saturday, February 9, 2019

Never argue with a fool (Bull and Crocodile Fable)




 
Two bulls are standing at a river bank to drink water and looking at a log floating just at a short distance. The first tells the second that it is a crocodile. The second bull shakes its head in denial and says it is a log. The first bull picks up a stone and throws it at the log. The log does not move. The second bull reacts to it by saying, "See it is a log." The first bull again tells the second that it is a crocodile. The second again shook its head in denial and says it is a log. The first bull picks up a stick and prods the log, nothing happens, nothing moves. The second bull reacts to it by saying, "See it is a log." The first bull again tells the second that it is a crocodile. The second again shook its head in denial and says it is a log. The first bull now angry and annoyed screams at the log, splashes water on the log but to no avail nothing happens. Now, the first bull steps forward and jumps onto the log only to discover that the crocodile now just turned to eat it in a gulp and retake its position as a log. The second bull now murmurs to the third bull that "see that thing, there, is a crocodile".

Thursday, January 31, 2019

Never argue with a fool (Donkey and Tiger Fable)


 
The donkey said to the tiger, 'The grass is blue.' Tiger said, 'No grass is green.'
Then the discussion between the two became intense. Both of them are firm in their own words. To end this controversy, both went to Lion – King of Jungle.

In the middle of the animal kingdom, sitting on the throne was a lion. The donkey started yelling before the tiger could say anything. “Your Highness, the grass is blue, isn’t it?” Lion said, 'Yes! The grass is blue.'

Donkey, 'This tiger does not believe. Annoys me He should be punished properly.' The king declared, 'Tiger will be jailed for a year. King's verdict was heard by donkey and he was jumping in joy in entire jungle. The tiger was sentenced to one-year jail.'

The Tiger went to the Lion and asked, 'Why Your Highness! Grass is green, isn’t it?' Lion said, 'Yes! Grass is green.’ Tiger said, '... then why am I sentenced to jail?'

Lion said, “you did not get punished for the grass being blue Or green. You have been punished for debating with that stupid donkey. Brave and intelligent creatures like you have argued with a donkey and have come here to get a decision”

Sunday, January 27, 2019

Four Seasons of a Tree




Four Seasons of a Tree
Don't judge a life by one difficult season.
There was a man who had four sons. He wanted his sons to learn to not judge things too quickly. So he sent them each on a quest, in turn, to go and look at a pear tree that was a great distance away. The first son went in the winter, the second in the spring, the third in summer, and the youngest son in the fall.

When they had all gone and come back, he called them together to describe what they had seen. The first son said that the tree was ugly, bent, and twisted. The second son said no--it was covered with green buds and full of promise. The third son disagreed, he said it was laden with blossoms that smelled so sweet and looked so beautiful, it was the most graceful thing he had ever seen. The last son disagreed with all of them; he said it was ripe and drooping with fruit, full of life and fulfillment.

The man then explained to his sons that they were all right, because they had each seen but one season in the tree's life. He told them that you cannot judge a tree, or a person, by only one season, and that the essence of who they are--and the pleasure, joy, and love that come from that life--can only be measured at the end, when all the seasons are up.

If you give up when it's winter, you will miss the promise of your spring, the beauty of your summer, fulfillment of your fall. Don't let the pain of one season destroy the joy of all the rest.

Saturday, January 26, 2019

Audacity of Hope (A Sermon)




As the congregation joined in, the deacons, then Reverend Wright, appeared beneath the large cross that hung from the rafters. The reverend remained silent while devotions were read, scanning the faces in front of him, watching the collection basket pass from hand to hand. When the collection was over, he stepped up to the pulpit and read the names of those who had passed away that week, those who were ailing, each name causing a flutter somewhere in the crowd, the murmur of recognition. “Let us join hands,” the reverend said, “as we kneel and pray at the foot of an old rugged cross-”
“Yes…”
“Lord, we come first to thank you for what you’ve already done for us…. We come to thank you most of all for Jesus. Lord, we come from different walks of life. Some considered high, and some low…but all on equal ground at the foot of this cross. Lord, thank you! For Jesus, Lord…our burden bearer and heavy load sharer, we thank you….”
The title of Reverend Wright’s sermon that morning was “The Audacity of Hope.” He began with a passage from the Book of Samuel-the story of Hannah, who, barren and taunted by her rivals, had wept and shaken in prayer before her God. The story reminded him, he said, of a sermon a fellow pastor had preached at a conference some years before, in which the pastor described going to a museum and being confronted by a painting titled Hope.
“The painting depicts a harpist,” Reverend Wright explained, “a woman who at first glance appears to be sitting atop a great mountain. Until you take a closer look and see that the woman is bruised and bloodied, dressed in tattered rags, the harp reduced to a single frayed string. Your eye is then drawn down to the scene below, down to the valley below, where everywhere are the ravages of famine, the drumbeat of war, a world groaning under strife and deprivation.
“It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere…That’s the world! On which hope sits!”
And so it went, a meditation on a fallen world. While the boys next to me doodled on their church bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House. As the sermon unfolded, though, the stories of strife became more prosaic, the pain more immediate. The reverend spoke of the hardship that the congregation would face tomorrow, the pain of those far from the mountain-top, worrying about paying the light bill. But also the pain of those closer to the metaphorical summit: the middle-class woman who seems to have all her worldly needs taken care of but whose husband is treating her like “the maid, the household service, the jitney service, and the escort service all rolled into one”; the child whose wealthy parents worry more about “the texture of hair on the outside of the head than the quality of education inside the head.”
“Isn’t that…the world that each of us stands on?”
“Yessuh!”
“Like Hannah, we have known bitter times! Daily, we face rejection and despair!”
“Say it!”
“And yet consider once again the painting before us. Hope! Like Hannah, that harpist is looking upwards, a few faint notes floating upwards towards the heavens. She dares to hope…. She has the audacity…to make music…and praise God…on the one string…she has left!” People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters.

Source: Excerpt taken from book "Dreams from my father" by Barack Obama

Friday, January 11, 2019

Top 10 changemakers who made it big after rejection


Warren Buffett to Elon Musk: Top 10 changemakers who made it big after rejection
Each of their stories inspires one to accept no's and let failures not break one's determination to stay on the course

Pursuing one's dream consistently despite rejections is one lesson that all aspiring entrepreneurs can learn from businessmen who made it big after rejections.
The list of changemakers include names from Warren Buffet to Elon Musk. Each of their stories inspires one to accept no's and let it not break one's determination to stay the course.
Here are the top 10 such changemakers that have made it big after rejection: 

Steve Jobs
Tech icon Steve Jobs was rejected and sacked from his own company, Apple, in 1985. In the interim, Jobs launched another business, software company NeXT, and purchased a little animation studio called Pixar Animation Studios from Lucasfilm. Pixar, which made him his first billion dollars, is reportedly the most successful animation studio of its kind.
In 1997, Jobs returned to Apple and set it on course to become one of the most valuable publicly traded companies.
"I am convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from non-successful ones is pure perseverance," Jobs advised entrepreneurs during a 1995 interview for an oral history project done by Computerworld Information Technology Awards Foundation.

JK Rowling
The worldwide known author of Harry Potter, JK Rowling, in 2016 shared some of the toughest rejection letters she received over the years. In a Twitter post, Rowling posted two rejection letters, one for Harry Potter book and for her Cormoran Strike detective series, which she wrote under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.
Interestingly, Harry Potter was turned down 12 times before Bloomsbury agreed to publish it. "I wasn't going to give up until every single publisher turned me down, but I often feared that would happen," Rowling wrote. "I had nothing to lose and sometimes that makes you brave enough to try."
Harry Potter's first book alone has sold over 100 million copies and the combined series is estimated to have sold close to 400 million.

Elon Musk
The success story of SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk entails a number of rejections.  Musk is said to have not received any traction when he applied for a gig at Netscape in 1995, following which he founded Zip2. The company's board, however, removed him as CEO.
Musk founded X.com, an online-payment company which went on to become PayPal. He was once again fired from his job as PayPal's CEO.
These rejections did not stop Musk. He went on to achieve his dream to build an aerospace business. When the Russian entities offered a deal worth $8 million for a rocket, Musk considered the deal was too expensive and decided to make affordable rockets. Thus, SpaceX came into existence.
He also co-founded Tesla, Neuralink and The Boring Company. While Musk continues to deal with setbacks such as Tesla production bottlenecks and rocket explosions, he is still reaching for the stars.
"When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favour," Musk said.

Oprah Winfrey
Before Oprah Winfrey became the star of daytime TV, she was fired from her job at a local Baltimore station. Winfrey found her true calling in the network's morning show, People Are Talking, which yielded some less than stellar reviews early on.
"Not all my memories of Baltimore are fond ones. But I do have fond memories of Baltimore, because it grew me into a real woman. I came in naive, unskilled, not really knowing anything about business or about life. And Baltimore grew me up," Winfrey said while reflecting on the experience to The Baltimore Sun.
The Oprah Winfrey Show became one of the highest ranking shows in American history, according to CNN. In 2011, Oprah was the best-paid female in the entertainment industry, according to Forbes Magazine, and remains the richest self-made woman and only black female billionaire.

Warren Buffett
The Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett, is known as one of the most profound investor. The 88-year-old has had a good mind for business and investment since he was a child. He started investing when he was just 11-years-old.
At 19, when Buffet was trying to get into his dream school Harvard, he was rejected. "I looked about 16 and emotionally was about 9. I spent 10 minutes with the Harvard alumnus who was doing the interview, and he assessed my capabilities and turned me down," Buffett said in an interview with Alice Schroeder in her biography of the tycoon.
Later, Buffett considered his rejection by Harvard as the 'pivotal episode of his life'. Since Harvard did not work out, it led him to Columbia where he honed his skills in investing. It has clearly paid off.

Barbara Corcoran
Barbara Corcoran, founder of the Corcoran Group and star of TV's Shark Tank, had straight D's in her school and 20 jobs before age 23 in her resume.
In 2008, Corcoran was offered a position on ABC's Shark Tank only to have the offer rescinded. After she lost the job to another female entrepreneur, Corcoran wrote a powerful letter to the studio owner that persuaded him to give her another shot.
"I said that all the best things happened to me on the heels of rejection and I considered his rejection a lucky charm," Corcoran told Entrepreneur. "I cited half a dozen similar situations throughout my career where obstacles turned into my greatest opportunities."

Jeff Bezos
The founder of the US giant Amazon Jeff Bezos is the richest man on the planet. While Amazon's success is well known to people, Bezos had to struggle in the initial days to raise early funds for the business.
In an interview with 60 Minutes, Bezos explained: "I had to take 60 meetings to raise $1 million, and I raised it from 22 people at approximately $50,000 a person. It was nip and tuck whether I was going to be able to raise that money. So, the whole thing could have ended before the whole thing started. That was 1995 and the first question every investor asked me was: ‘What’s the internet?'"
Amazon recently overtook Microsoft to become the world's most valuable listed company. The online giant was valued at $810 billion as compared to Microsoft at $789 billion.

Sallie Krawcheck
Sallie Krawcheck, the most recognisable women on Wall Street, was publicly fired from her position as Citigroup’s CEO after she said that the firm had an obligation to pay back some of the money that their clients had lost because of its advice.
Krawcheck, however, channelled her rejection into becoming an entrepreneur and launching an investing platform for women called Ellevest. "The biggest risk is not taking any career risk," Krawcheck told Entrepreneur. "We all need to be pushing ourselves in different directions, otherwise we risk having the world just pass us by."

Jack Ma
Alibaba co-founder and China's richest man, Jack Ma's success story also entails various incidents of rejection. Ma was rejected from all the 30 jobs, including a job at KFC, where he had applied for work in his initial days. Even Harvard rejected his application for a total of 10 times.
At KFC, where 24 people applied for the job, Ma said, 23 were hired but he wasn't one of them.
The early rejections, however, taught him an important business lesson: "You have to get used to failure," Ma said while speaking at the University of Nairobi.

Bill Gates
When Microsoft went public in 1986, making Bill Gates a 31-year-old billionaire, Gates shared that 900 people out of 1,200 rejected his idea. Driven by his passion for computer programming, he built what would become the world's largest software company.
"There's no secret. I worked really hard on my idea to get it as good as I could, and then knocked on door after door," Gates said when asked about his secret to this success.