In the name of God
A portrait of me
My mind analyses every information and event at every moment .My sight is slow in operation and aided by imagination and sometimes it was not sure in conclusion . I consult with others and try to select whatever is best . In sudden disturbing circumstances ,I try to adjust and when I face an enemy I may be concerned at first but then I challenge it . I am somehow careless in something and careful in something else .In least circumstances I have no doubt but when I decide to do I go through with my purpose without paying attention to the obstacles.
My honesty is pure and I am logic . Sometimes my decision is affected by friendship or hatred .My reaction is quick but my resolution is slow and firm . I am patient but when I become angry ,I will be tremendous in my wrath . My heart is warm in affection , but when I calculate people`s value and find not worthiness it becomes indifferent and cool .
In the circle of my friend sometime I take part in conversation freely ,sometime I prefer to be quiet . When I am called on for a sudden opinion , I am unready and embarrassed because I am in the habit of thinking advanced .I am interested in nature and thinking about it.

William sydnney Porter
O. Henry (1862-1910) was a prolific American short-story writer, a master of surprise endings, who wrote about the life of ordinary people in New York City. A twist of plot, which turns on an ironic or coincidental circumstance, is typical of O. Henry's stories.
William Sydney Porter (O. Henry) was born in Greensboro, North Carolina. His father, Algernon Sidney Porter, was a physician. When William was three, his mother died, and he was raised by his paternal grandmother and aunt. William was an avid reader, but at the age of fifteen he left school, and then worked in a drug store and on a Texas ranch. He moved to Houston, where he had a number of jobs, including that of bank clerk. After moving to Austin, Texas, in 1882, he married.
In 1884 he started a humorous weekly The Rolling Stone. When the weekly failed, he joined the Houston Post as a reporter and columnist. In 1897 he was convicted of embezzling money, although there has been much debate over his actual guilt. In 1898 he entered a penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio.
While in prison O. Henry started to write short stories to earn money to support his daughter Margaret. His first work, "Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking" (1899), appeared in McClure's Magazine. After doing three years of the five years sentence, Porter emerged from the prison in 1901 and changed his name to O. Henry.
O. Henry moved to New York City in 1902 and from December 1903 to January 1906 he wrote a story a week for the New York World, also publishing in other magazines. Henry's first collection, Cabbages And Kings appeared in 1904. The second, The Four Million, was published two years later and included his well-known stories "The Gift of the Magi" and "The Furnished Room". The Trimmed Lamp (1907) included "The Last Leaf". Henry's best known work is perhaps the much anthologized "The Ransom of Red Chief", included in the collection Whirligigs (1910). The Heart Of The West (1907) presented tales of the Texas range. O. Henry published 10 collections and over 600 short stories during his lifetime.
O. Henry's last years were shadowed by alcoholism, ill health, and financial problems. He married Sara Lindsay Coleman in 1907, but the marriage was not happy, and they separated a year later. O. Henry died of cirrhosis of the liver on June 5, 1910, in New York. Three more collections, Sixes And Sevens (1911), Rolling Stones (1912) and Waifs And Strays (1917), appeared posthumously.

Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1706] – April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman and diplomat. As a scientist he was a major figure in the Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and a musical instrument. He formed both the first public lending library in America and first fire department in Pennsylvania. He was an early proponent of colonial unity and as a political writer and activist he, more than anyone, invented the idea of an American nation[1] and as a diplomat during the American Revolution, he secured the French alliance that helped to make independence possible

Virtue
Franklin sought to cultivate his character by a plan of thirteen virtues, which he developed at age 20 (in 1726) and continued to practice in some form for the rest of his life. His autobiography (see references below) lists his thirteen virtues as:
1. "TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation."
2. "SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation."
3. "ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time."
4. "RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve."
5. "FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing."
6. "INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions."
7. "SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly."
8. "JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty."
9. "MODERATION. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve."
10. "CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation."
11. "TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable."
12. "CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation."
13. "HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates."
14. "TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation."
15. "SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation."
16. "ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time."

Stephen Crane


Stephen Crane (1871-1900), American novelist and poet, one of the first American exponents of the naturalistic style of writing (see Naturalism). Crane is known for his pessimistic and often brutal portrayals of the human condition, but his stark realism is relieved by poetic charm and a sympathetic understanding of character.
Born in Newark, New Jersey, Crane was educated at Lafayette College and Syracuse University. In 1891 he began work in New York City as a freelance reporter in the slums. From his work and his own penniless existence in the Bowery he drew material for his first novel, Maggie, a Girl of the Streets (1893), which he published at his own expense under the pseudonym Johnston Smith. The work, the story of a young prostitute who commits suicide, won praise from the American writers Hamlin Garland and William Dean Howells but was not a popular success. Crane's next novel, The Red Badge of Courage (1895), gained international recognition as a penetrating and realistic psychological study of a young soldier in the American Civil War (1861-1865).
Although Crane had never experienced military service, the understanding of the ordeals of combat that he revealed in this work compelled various American and foreign newspapers to hire him as a correspondent during the Greco-Turkish War (1897) and the Spanish-American War (1898). Shipwrecked while accompanying an expedition from the United States to Cuba in 1896, Crane suffered privations that eventually brought on tuberculosis. His experience was the basis for the title story of his collection The Open Boat and Other Stories (1898). Crane settled in England in 1897; his private life, which included several extramarital affairs, had caused gossip in the United States. In England he was befriended by the writers Joseph Conrad and Henry James.
In addition to being a novelist, journalist, and short-story writer, Crane was also an innovator in verse techniques. His two volumes of poetry, The Black Riders and Other Lines (1895) and War Is Kind and Other Poems (1899), are important early examples of experimental free verse. His other writings include Active Service (1899), Whilomville Stories (1900), and Wounds in the Rain (1900). Crane's collected letters were published in 1954.

Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
b. Nov. 1, 1871, Newark, N.J., U.S.d. June 5, 1900, Badenweiler, Baden, Ger.American novelist, poet, and short-story writer, best known for his novels Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) and TheRed Badge of Courage (1895) and the short stories "The Open Boat," "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky," and "TheBlue Hotel."Stephen's father, Jonathan Crane, was a Methodist minister who died in 1880, leaving Stephen, the youngest of 14children, to be reared by his devout, strong-minded mother. After attending preparatory school at the ClaverackCollege (1888-90), Crane spent less than two years at college and then went to New York City to live in a medicalstudents' boardinghouse while freelancing his way to a literary career. While alternating bohemian student life andexplorations of the Bowery slums with visits to genteel relatives in the country near Port Jervis, N.Y., Crane wrote hisfirst book, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893), a sympathetic study of an innocent and abused slum girl's descent intoprostitution and her eventual suicide.At that time so shocking that Crane published it under a pseudonym and at his own expense, Maggie left him to struggleas a poor and unknown freelance journalist, until he was befriended by Hamlin Garland and the influential critic WilliamDean Howells. Suddenly in 1895 the publication of The Red Badge of Courage and of his first book of poems, The BlackRiders, brought him international fame. Strikingly different in tone and technique from Maggie, The Red Badge ofCourage is a subtle impressionistic study of a young soldier trying to find reality amid the conflict of fierce warfare. Thebook's hero, Henry Fleming, survives his own fear, cowardice, and vainglory and goes on to discover courage, humility,and perhaps wisdom in the confused combat of an unnamed Civil War battle. Crane, who had as yet seen no war, waswidely praised by veterans for his uncanny power to imagine and reproduce the sense of actual combat.Crane's few remaining years were chaotic and personally disastrous. His unconventionality and his sympathy for thedowntrodden aroused malicious gossip and false charges of drug addiction and Satanism that disgusted the fastidiousauthor. His reputation as a war writer, his desire to see if he had guessed right about the psychology of combat, and hisfascination with death and danger sent him to Greece and then to Cuba as a war correspondent.His first attempt in 1897 to report on the insurrection in Cuba ended in near disaster; the ship Commodore on whichhe was traveling sank with $5,000 worth of ammunition, and Crane--reported drowned--finally rowed into shore in adinghy with the captain, cook, and oiler, Crane scuttling his money belt of gold before swimming through dangerous surf.The result was one of the world's great short stories, "The Open Boat."Unable to get to Cuba, Crane went to Greece to report the Greco-Turkish War for the New York Journal. He wasaccompanied by Cora Taylor, a former brothel-house proprietor. At the end of the war they settled in England in a villaat Oxted, Surrey, and in April 1898 Crane departed to report the Spanish-American War in Cuba, first for the New YorkWorld and then for the New York Journal. When the war ended, Crane wrote the first draft of Active Service, a novel ofthe Greek war. He finally returned to Cora in England nine months after his departure and settled in a costly14th-century manor house at Brede Place, Sussex. Here Cora, a silly woman with social and literary pretensions,contributed to Crane's ruin by encouraging his own social ambitions. They ruined themselves financially by entertaininghordes of spongers, as well as close literary friends--including Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, H.G. Wells, HenryJames, and Robert Barr, who completed Crane's Irish romance The O'Ruddy.Crane now fought a desperate battle against time, illness, and debts. Privation and exposure in his Bowery years and asa correspondent, together with an almost deliberate disregard for his health, probably hastened the disease that killedhim at an early age. He died of tuberculosis that was compounded by the recurrent malarial fever he had caught inCuba. After The Red Badge of Courage, Crane's few attempts at the novel were of small importance, but he achieved anextraordinary mastery of the short story. He exploited youthful small-town experiences in The Monster and OtherStories (1899) and Whilomville Stories (1900); the Bowery again in George's Mother (1896); an early trip to thesouthwest and Mexico in "The Blue Hotel" and "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky"; the Civil War again in The LittleRegiment (1896); and war correspondent experiences in The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure (1898) andWounds in the Rain (1900). In the best of these tales Crane showed a rare ability to shape colourful settings, dramaticaction, and perceptive characterization into ironic explorations of human nature and destiny. In even briefer scope,rhymeless, cadenced and "free" in form, his unique, flashing poetry was extended into War Is Kind (1899).Stephen Crane first broke new ground in Maggie, which evinced an uncompromising (then considered sordid) realismthat initiated the literary trend of the succeeding generations--i.e., the sociological novels of Frank Norris, TheodoreDreiser, and James T. Farrell. Crane intended The Red Badge of Courage to be "a psychological portrayal of fear," andreviewers rightly praised its psychological realism. The first nonromantic novel of the Civil War to attain widespreadpopularity, The Red Badge of Courage turned the tide of the prevailing convention about war fiction and established anew, if not unprecedented, one. The secret of Crane's success as war correspondent, journalist, novelist, short-storywriter, and poet lay in his achieving tensions between irony and pity, illusion and reality, or the double mood of hopecontradicted by despair. Crane was a great stylist and a master of the contradictory effect.(Source: ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA)

mark twain

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MARK TWAIN QUOTES

When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
MARK TWAIN, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.
MARK TWAIN, Letters from the Earth
What's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?
MARK TWAIN, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
All kings is mostly rapscallions.
MARK TWAIN, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
"Classic." A book which people praise and don't read.
MARK TWAIN, Following the Equator
To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct.
MARK TWAIN, "How to Tell a Story"
The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind couldn't detect.
MARK TWAIN, Joan of Arc
In order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.
MARK TWAIN, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.
MARK TWAIN, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
Do not put off till tomorrow what can be put off till day-after-tomorrow just as well.
MARK TWAIN, Mark Twain's Notebook
Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.
MARK TWAIN, editorial in the Hartford Courant, Aug. 24, 1897
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not absence of fear.
MARK TWAIN, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
MARK TWAIN, Mark Twain's Notebook
Government is merely a servant – merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.
MARK TWAIN, The Bible According to Mark Twain
The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.
MARK TWAIN, Mark Twain's Notebook
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
MARK TWAIN, Autobiography
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.
MARK TWAIN, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so.
MARK TWAIN, Mark Twain's Notebooks
The elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.
MARK TWAIN, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.
MARK TWAIN, "How to Tell a Story"
Golf is a good walk spoiled.
MARK TWAIN, Greatly Exaggerated: The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain
The holy passion of friendship is so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring in nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
MARK TWAIN, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.
MARK TWAIN, Europe and Elsewhere
When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
MARK TWAIN, Mark Twain's Notebook
Put all your eggs in one basket -- and watch that basket!
MARK TWAIN, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
MARK TWAIN, Following the Equator
Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
MARK TWAIN, The Mysterious Stranger
The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
MARK TWAIN, Following the Equator
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.
MARK TWAIN, Innocents Abroad
After a few months’ acquaintance with European “coffee,” one’s mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with its clotted layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream after all, and a thing which never existed.
MARK TWAIN, A Tramp Abroad
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
MARK TWAIN, quoted in Greg Tanghe's Pearls
Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have someone to divide it with.
MARK TWAIN, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
The lack of money is the root of all evil.
MARK TWAIN, Mark Twain's Notebook
It is better to have old second-hand diamonds than none at all.
MARK TWAIN, Following the Equator
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
MARK TWAIN, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.
MARK TWAIN, Mark Twain's Notebook
There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
MARK TWAIN, Following the Equator
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
MARK TWAIN, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.
MARK TWAIN, Mark Twain's Notebook
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
MARK TWAIN, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.
MARK TWAIN, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
MARK TWAIN

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