Larry E. Greiner of the Harvard Business School wrote a noteworthy article
with this title in the Harvard Business Review in July 1972, describing the
growing pains that organizations go through.
Greiner proposed that organizations exhibit five predictable stages of
growth called evolutions and five periods of crises called revolutions. His
theory is readily applicable to many organizations.
The growth pattern consists of tightening and loosening of management
reins in response to changes within the organization and the environment.
The evolution/revolution pattern, as shown by Apple Computer, is an
excellent way to put a company’s history into MBA perspective. Apple
Computer sprang forth from the creativity of Steven Jobs and Stephen
Wozniak. Beginning in 1976, these two entrepreneurs were on a freight train
of rapid growth until the company became so unwieldy that is almost jumped
the tracks in 1983. Apple was faced with the leadership crisis of a growth
company that didn’t have anyone who could efficiently run its day-to-day
operations. Jobs was a lofty visionary making speeches, while Wozniak was
the magic technician.
The company started to run out of gas as its creative fuel ran low. Apple
II sales slumped and the new Lisa computer failed. John Sculley (Wharton
MBA ’63) was brought in from Pepsi-Cola to give the company direction.
Sculley reorganized Apple and cut costs in its bloated headquarters. Steve
Jobs and his followers demanded more autonomy to develop a new breakthrough
product and Sculley gave it to them. The delegation resulted in the
creation of the Macintosh.
The Mac created another explosive growth period. However, Jobs could
not work in a growing corporate bureaucracy, and he started a new company
called NeXT. In 1989 the aging Mac faced fierce competition, and as profits
declined in 1990, a new Apple crisis of control was brewing. Michael Spindler
was appointed as chief operating officer to assist Sculley as chairman to take
control and return the company to increasing profitability. By 1992 they had
succeeded, but fell into crisis in 1995. Steve Jobs returned and led yet another
recovery in 1998 with the iMac and G3 computers.
I once read a poignant Reader’s Digest article about a little girl who often misbehaved. Her mother had to
continually reprimand her. However, one day, the little girl had been especially good and hadn’t done a single thing
that called for a reprimand. The mother said, “That night after I tucked her in bed and started downstairs, I heard
a muffled noise. Running back up, I found her head buried in the pillow. She was sobbing. Between the sobs she
asked, ‘Mommy, haven’t I been a pretty good girl today?’”
The question, the mother said, went through her like a knife.
“I had been quick to correct her,” she said, “when she was wrong. But when she tried to behave, I hadn’t noticed it
and I put her to bed without one word of appreciation.” Adults are all grown-up little girls and little boys. We may
not go to bed sobbing if the people in our lives don’t notice when we are good. Nevertheless, a trace of those tears
lingers.
The anthropologist Brian Hare has done experiments with dogs, for example, where he puts a piece of food under one of
two cups, placed several feet apart. The dog knows that there is food to be had, but has no idea which of the cups
holds the prize. Then Hare points at the right cup, taps on it, looks directly at it. What happens? The dog goes to
the right cup virtually every time. Yet when Hare did the same experiment with chimpanzees — an animal that shares
98.6 percent of our genes — the chimps couldn’t get it right. A dog will look at you for help, and a chimp won’t.
“Primates are very good at using the cues of the same species,” Hare explained. “So if we were able to do a similar
game, and it was a chimp or another primate giving a social cue, they might do better. But they are not good at
using human cues when you are trying to cooperate with them. They don’t get it: ‘Why would you ever tell me where
the food is?’
The key specialization of dogs, though, is that dogs pay attention to humans, when humans are doing something very
human, which is sharing information about something that someone else might actually want.” Dogs aren’t smarter than
chimps; they just have a different attitude toward people. “Dogs are really interested in humans,” Hare went on. “
Interested to the point of obsession. To a dog, you are a giant walking tennis ball.”
A dog cares, deeply, which way your body is leaning. Forward or backward? Forward can be seen as aggressive; backward
— even a quarter of an inch — means nonthreatening. It means you’ve relinquished what ethologists call an intention
movement to proceed forward. Cock your head, even slightly, to the side, and a dog is disarmed. Look at him straight
on and he’ll read it like a red flag. Standing straight, with your shoulders squared, rather than slumped, can mean
the difference between whether your dog obeys a command or ignores it.
Breathing even and deeply — rather than holding your breath — can mean the difference between defusing a tense
situation and igniting it. “I think they are looking at our eyes and where our eyes are looking, and what our eyes
look like,” the ethologist Patricia McConnell, who teaches at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, says. “A rounded
eye with a dilated pupil is a sign of high arousal and aggression in a dog. I believe they pay a tremendous amount
of attention to how relaxed our face is and how relaxed our facial muscles are, because that’s a big cue for them
with each other. Is the jaw relaxed? Is the mouth slightly open? And then the arms. They pay a tremendous amount of
attention to where our arms go.”
In the book The Other End of the Leash, McConnell decodes one of the most common of all human-dog interactions — the
meeting between two leashed animals on a walk. To us, it’s about one dog sizing up another. To her, it’s about two
dogs sizing up each other after first sizing up their respective owners. The owners “are often anxious about how
well the dogs will get along,” she writes, “and if you watch them instead of the dogs, you’ll often notice that the
humans will hold their breath and round their eyes and mouths in an ‘on alert’ expression. Since these behaviors are
expressions of offensive aggression in canine culture, I suspect that the humans are unwittingly signaling tension.
If you exaggerate this by tightening the leash, as many owners do, you can actually cause the dogs to attack each
other. Think of it: the dogs are in a tense social encounter, surrounded by support from their own pack, with the
humans forming a tense, staring, breathless circle around them. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen dogs shift
their eyes toward their owner’s frozen faces, and then launch growling at the other dog.”
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
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 stockmarket 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
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,
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
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.”
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.”
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".
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”
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.
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
