A number of Americans successfully spread that French people are rude. It is possible that those Americans were deprived of high human values, principles, and standards that denote finesse; and one day, they confronted their reality. What you just read means that if a person is visiting France ~or your home or mine~ he must offer kindness, respect, and consideration BEFORE expecting kindness, respect, and consideration.

Rude people are in France, U.S.A., China, Australia, and in every country of today’s world.

Unlike Mexicans in the U.S.A. [Incapable to decipher that they are in someone else's country and to act appropriately] you must act appropriately and become aware that you are in French people’s country. It is expected of you to denote finesse and consideration by NOT approaching them you speaking in English. Like Mexicans in the U.S.A., if you are incapable to decipher why it is so, visiting France may harshly confront you with your reality. Expectedly, you will not admit it; and so, you become one more spreading that French people are rude.

On the other hand…

Can you demonstrate that you have been raised by fine folks; that they taught you how to be a fine person; that high human qualities, values, and principles were passed on to you; that you feel embedded your obligation to be kind, respectful, and considerate to others everywhere you go; and that you are capable to learn ?

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Then, centuries-old traditions and culture, fine art and other refinements, exquisite entertainment and shows, heavenly meals and fine wines, interacting with refined people, and experiencing what is perceived as the handwriting of the mastermind behind nature are each well suited to go hand-in-hand with you on your way to become enriched and cultivated by all of it.

Let’s imagine an encounter.

You approach a French person and offer a salutation such as ”Bonjour.” To a man it is “Bonjour Monsieur,” but to a woman whose marital status is unknown to you it is “Bonjour Mademoiselle.” Should you know the woman is married, then, it is “Bonjour Madame.” Other sentences are “Thank You” and “Good Bye” for which you say “Merci” ~or preferably “Merci Beaucoup”~ and “Au Revoir.”

Let’s imagine another encounter.

You now approach a man. You politely smile as you say… “Bonjour Monsieur. Je ne parle pas le français. Parlez vous l’anglais ?” Do not panic. Below, you will find a way to say that sentence correctly; but you must say it even if you read it from a sheet of paper which would be a charming act !

Possessing the manners known to finer people make a mountain-like difference when approaching French people. Are they rude when noting that you are not one of the Americans they know or heard about ? – Most certainly, they will not be because you offered a proper salutation with a smile. Then, you denoted consideration recognizing being in their country by NOT approaching them speaking in English. Lastly, you sent the message that you have intellect to learn.

Once in France, you will see that French People Are Rude comes from Americans deprived of high human qualities, principles, and standards mandatory to know why ~when visiting France or your home or mine~ they must offer kindness, respect, and consideration BEFORE expecting kindness, respect, and consideration.

If you are an American who possess manners known to finer people, then, Bon Voyage to the land of Renoir !

Originally published here.

1. Bureau of Engraving and Printing: You’ll see millions of dollars being printed during a tour of the Washington DC Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The tour features the various steps of currency production, beginning with large, blank sheets of paper, and ending with wallet-ready bills! The presses here print about $25 million every week day, although this amount can vary greatly. Other exhibits include ex-service currency, a collection of counterfeit currency, and a $100,000 bill.

2. Capitol Building: The majestic dome and Rotunda marking the heart of the U.S. Capitol Building not only symbolize the power of the legislative branch of the greatest democracy in the world, but also determine the coordinates of every street in Washington: every single address in the city is designated NE, NW, SE, or SW according to its relationship to the Rotunda. And since the Rotunda is not in the exact center of the city, the capitol’s four quadrants are disparate in size and shape.

3. Freer Gallery of Art: The Freer Gallery opened in 1923 based on the initial collections of Charles Lang Freer, who began collecting American art and then shifted his focus to works from across Asia. The gallery was the first Smithsonian museum with a focus on fine arts, and was established based on Freer’s request that he maintain full curatorial control over the collection until his death. Since that time, the collections have grown to nearly triple the original collection. Highlighting the Asian collection are Chinese ceramics and paintings, Korean ceramics, and pottery, Japanese folding screens, and Indian and Persian manuscripts.

4. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden: The Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden had its beginnings in 1966 when Latvian-born Joseph H. Hirshhorn donated his huge collection of contemporary and modern art. The museum officially opened 1974, and was then the recipient of additional works bequeathed by Hirshhorn in 1981 at his death.

5. Library of Congress: Established in 1800 through an act of Congress, the Library of Congress originally held 3,000 volumes, and today it is the largest library in the world with more than 138 million items, and increasing by 10,000 more daily. The library is a phenomenal research resource and a compendium of amazing historical documents including a Gutenberg Bible purchased in 1930 and one of three perfect copies on vellum in the world. The library also contains first drafts of the Declaration of Independence and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

6. Museum of Natural History: The Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History opened in 1910 on the National Mall and was among the first Smithsonian buildings constructed exclusively to house the national collections and research facilities. Its exhibits range from dinosaur skeletons and an insect zoo, to rare gemstones including the famously cursed Hope Diamond.

7. National Air and Space Museum: The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum is a goldmine for aviation enthusiasts, maintaining the largest collection of historic air and spacecraft in the world, including some of the most famous artifacts of all time: the Wright Brothers’ Flyer, Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis, and Apollo 11 — as well as the original Star Trek model of the Federation Starfleet’s Enterprise.

8. National Arboretum: Many of the best-loved shrubs and trees in America were developed at the nation’s premier horticultural research facility the National Arboretum, featuring 444 acres of demonstration gardens, greenhouses, and natural woods.Most famous is the azalea exhibit, the product of pioneering research of the first director after the arboretum was established in 1927. Many, many exhibits and plants have been developed since that time, however, among them an amazing array of new shrubs such as Crapemyrtles, hardy hibiscus, lilacs, viburnums, and many new tree varieties intended to adapt to various locales across the U.S., including a wide range of new red maples, magnolias, elms, and flowering cherries.

9. National Archives: Democracy starts here. That is the motto of the National Archives, created in 1934 to house the country’s most important historic documents and to centralize federal record keeping. Before that time, individual government agencies were in charge of maintaining their own records, many in disarray, careless stored, and damaged by fire, insects, heat, and just the vagaries of time. The first set of records to be archived, identified through an extensive survey in 1937, included 1,360,000 cubic feet of records, a figure which of course continued to increase, as New Deal and then World War II records poured in.

10. National Gallery of Art: The National Gallery of Art is comprised of two structures connected by an underground concourse: the marble neoclassical West Building, completed in 1941 and designed by John Russell Pope (architect of the Jefferson Memorial and the National Archives); and the triangular East Building, completed in 1978 and designed by I.M. Pei, of matching Tennessee pink marble and featuring glass walls and illuminating skylights.

11. National Museum of African Art: The National Museum of African Art was established in 1964 and became part of the Smithsonian Institution in 1979. It houses a wide range of ancient and contemporary art from Africa, and features a permanent collection of over 8500 works from all artistic genres including paintings, textiles, ceramics, furniture, tools masks, figures, musical instruments, and jewelry.

12. National Museum of American History: Originally opened in 1964 as the Museum of History and Technology, the National Museum of American History has become an important chronicler of the history of science and technology and its effects on the growth of American culture and society. Among the collection’s highlights is the original 30 ft x 34 ft Star-Spangled Banner, the flag viewed by Francis Scott Key during War of 1812 and on which he based the national anthem.

13. National Museum of the American Indian: The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian’s founding in 2004 completes the National Mall’s collection of museums and graces the mall with its warm sand-colored limestone, soft and light, with a shape evocative of nature’s continual movement and the indigenous peoples whose culture reflected a powerful natural connection. Its interior is even more stunning, featuring a rotunda representing the Potomac and acting as the main entrance to the museum as well as a venue for various events and performances.

14. National Museum of the Marine Corps: The National Museum of the Marine Corps, a new museum that opened in 2006, maintains a broad collection of poignant and fascinating artifacts and interactive displays on the Marine Corps and its members’ contribution to the nation. The museum is located on more than 135 acres adjacent to Marine Corps Base Quantico and encompasses approximately 118,000 square feet. Its iconic 210 ft. high stainless steel spire is intended to represent the famous image of the marines raising the American flag over Iwo Jima, as well as ” notions of swords at salute, aircraft climbing in to the heavens or a howitzer at the ready,” according to the museum’s introductive materials.

15. National Zoo: Created by Congress in 1889, the Smithsonian’s National Zoo is a standout zoo, well-known as the home to more than 400 species — including its most famous occupants, the giant pandas from China — as well as being a leader in the care, breeding, and exhibition of animals. The zoo encompasses 163 acres where it displays animals in their own natural habitat organized along three main paths, the Olmsted Walk, the Valley Trail, and the new exhibit as of 2006, the Asia Trail.

16. Smithsonian Institution Building: The world-renowned Smithsonian Institution is truly the largest museum complex and research organization in the world. Comprised of 17 museums and the National Zoo in D.C., as well as two more museums in New York, the Smithsonian exemplifies humankind’s search for reason and meaning through the arts, history, science, and technology.

17. Supreme Court: The U. S. Supreme Court, the highest body of the judiciary arm of the federal government, is housed in the Supreme Court Building, designed of Corinthian marble in a style to match other congressional buildings, and constructed in 1935. Before that time, the Supreme Court operated out of the Capitol Building. On the front stairway are two statues, the Contemplation of Justice and the Guardian or Authority of Law. Along the corridor leading to the Courtroom, known as the Great Hall, are busts of all former Chief Justices.

18. United States Holocaust Museum: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s purpose is to ensure that we never forget, and never repeat, the atrocities of the holocaust, stimulating people to “confront hatred, prevent genocide, promote human dignity, and strengthen democracy,” according to the museum’s literature.

19. U.S. Botanic Garden: The oldest continually-operating botanic garden in the United States, the U.S. Botanic Garden is a showcase centrally located on the National Mall, and is nearly as old as DC itself. Its first greenhouse was built in 1842 and since 1849, it has been at its current location. Its charter, provided by Congress, is “… to collect, cultivate, and grow the various vegetable products of this and other countries for exhibition and display to the public…”, and it does indeed feature amazing plant diversity.

20. Washington Monument: The Washington Monument is a 555-ft. marble obelisk that stands as a sentinel and memorial to the nation’s first president. It is the most prominent landmark in Washington, D.C., and anchors the National Mall. The cornerstone of the monument was laid in 1848, but construction was not finished until 1884, as it was halted during the Civil War. In fact, astute observers can see a change in the type of marble at about the first third of the structure’s height, visible evidence of the changes that swept the country during the war.

21. Washington National Cathedral: Conceived in 1792 by Pierre l’Enfant as a “great church for national purposes,” actual planning and construction of the National Cathedral didn’t begin until a century later, and it was not until a century after that — 1990 — that the cathedral was completed.

22. White House: The White House, while planned by President George Washington and city architect Pierre l’Enfant, was never lived in by Washington, but has housed every single U.S. president since his successor John Adams moved in 1801. Originally called simply the Executive Mansion, the name the White House stuck after the building was whitewashed to cover the fire damage in 1814 during the War of 1812.

Originally published here.

19491972: Early years

Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and spent his childhood and high school years in Freehold Borough. He lived off South Street in Freehold Borough and attended Freehold Borough High School. His father, Douglas Frederick Springsteen, was of Dutch and Irish ancestry and worked, among other vocations, as a bus driver; his surname is Dutch for stepping stone. His mother, Adele Ann (ne Zerilli), was a legal secretary and was of Italian ancestry. His grandfather was born in Vico Equense, a city near Naples. He has two younger sisters, Virginia and Pamela. Pamela had a brief film career, but left acting to pursue still photography full time; she took photos for the Human Touch and Lucky Town albums.

Raised a Roman Catholic, Springsteen attended the St. Rose of Lima Catholic school in Freehold Borough, where he was at odds with both the nuns and other students, even though much of his later music reflects a deep Catholic ethos and included many rock-influenced, traditional Irish-Catholic hymns.

In ninth grade, he transferred to the public Freehold Regional High School, but did not fit in there, either. Old teachers have said he was a “loner, who wanted nothing more than to play his guitar.” He completed high school, but felt so uncomfortable that he skipped his own graduation ceremony. He briefly attended Ocean County College, but dropped out.

Springsteen had been inspired to take up music at the age of seven after seeing Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show. At 13, he bought his first guitar for $18; later, his mother took out a loan to buy the 16-year-old Springsteen a $60 Kent guitar, as he later memorialized in his song “The Wish.”

In 1965, he went to the house of Tex and Marion Vinyard, who sponsored young bands in town. They helped him become lead guitarist and subsequently the lead singer of The Castiles. The Castiles recorded two original songs at a public recording studio in Brick Township and played a variety of venues, including Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village. Marion Vinyard said that she believed the young Springsteen when he promised he would make it big.

Called for induction when he was 19, Springsteen failed his physical examination and didn’t serve in Vietnam. In an interview in Rolling Stone magazine in 1984, he said, “When I got on the bus to go take my physical, I thought one thing: I ain’t goin’.” He suffered a concussion in a motorcycle accident when he was 17, and this together with his “crazy” behaviour at induction and not taking the tests, was enough to get him a 4F.

New Jersey beach towns such as Asbury Park, New Jersey inspired the themes of ordinary life in Bruce Springsteen’s music.

In the late 1960s, Springsteen performed briefly in a power trio known as Earth, playing in clubs in New Jersey. Springsteen acquired the nickname “The Boss” during this period as when he played club gigs with a band he took on the task of collecting the band’s nightly pay and distributing it amongst his bandmates. Springsteen, however, has never liked this nickname, due to his dislike of bosses. Lately, however, he seems to have accepted the nickname. Many recent concerts have audiences making up various signs on banners, license plates and so on saying, “Boss Time”. Previously he had the nickname “Doctor”. From 1969 through early 1971, Springsteen performed with Steel Mill, which also featured Danny Federici, Vini Lopez, Vinnie Roslin and later Steve Van Zandt and Robbin Thompson. They went on to play the mid-Atlantic college circuit, and also briefly in California. In January 1970 well-known San Francisco Examiner music critic Philip Elwood gave Springsteen credibility in his glowing assessment of Steel Mill: “I have never been so overwhelmed by totally unknown talent.” Elwood went on to praise their “cohesive musicality” and, in particular, singled out Springsteen as “a most impressive composer.” During this time Springsteen also performed regularly at small clubs in Asbury Park and along the Jersey Shore, quickly gathering a cult following. Other acts followed over the next two years, as Springsteen sought to shape a unique and genuine musical and lyrical style: Dr Zoom & the Sonic Boom (earlyid 1971), Sundance Blues Band (mid 1971), and The Bruce Springsteen Band (mid 1971id 1972). With the addition of pianist David Sancious, the core of what would later become the E Street Band was formed, with occasional temporary additions such as horn sections, “The Zoomettes” (a group of female backing vocalists for “Dr Zoom”) and Southside Johnny Lyon on harmonica. Musical genres explored included blues, R&B, jazz, church music, early rock’n'roll, and soul. His prolific songwriting ability, with more words in some individual songs than other artists had in whole albums, brought his skill to the attention of several people who were about to change his life: new managers Mike Appel and Jim Cretecos, and legendary Columbia Records talent scout John Hammond, who, under Appel’s pressure, auditioned Springsteen in May 1972.

Even after Springsteen gained international acclaim, his New Jersey roots showed through in his music, and he often praised “the great state of New Jersey” in his live shows. Drawing on his extensive local appeal, he routinely sold out consecutive nights in major New Jersey and Philadelphia venues. He also made many surprise appearances at The Stone Pony and other shore nightclubs over the years, becoming the foremost exponent of the Jersey Shore sound.

19721974: Initial struggle for success

Springsteen signed a record deal with Columbia Records in 1972, with the help of John Hammond, who had signed Bob Dylan to the same label a decade earlier. Springsteen brought many of his New Jerseyased colleagues into the studio with him, thus forming the E Street Band (although it would not be formally named as such for a couple more years). His debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., released in January 1973, established him as a critical favorite, though sales were slow. Because of Springsteen’s lyrical poeticism and folk rockooted music exemplified on tracks like “Blinded by the Light” and “For You”, as well as the Columbia and Hammond connections, critics initially compared Springsteen to Bob Dylan. “He sings with a freshness and urgency I haven’t heard since I was rocked by ‘Like a Rolling Stone’,” wrote Crawdaddy magazine editor Peter Knobler in Springsteen’s first interview/profile, in March 1973. Crawdaddy “discovered” Springsteen in the rock press and was his earliest champion. (Springsteen and the E Street Band acknowledged by giving a private performance at the Crawdaddy 10th Anniversary Party in New York City in June 1976.) Music critic Lester Bangs wrote in Creem, 1975, that when Springsteen’s first album was released…..”many of us dismissed it: he wrote like Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, sang like Van Morrison and Robbie Robertson, and led a band that sounded like Van Morrison’s.” The track “Spirit in the Night” especially showed Morrison’s influence, while “Lost in the Flood” was the first of many portraits of Vietnam veterans and “Growin’ Up” his first take on the recurring theme of adolescence.

In September 1973 his second album, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, was released, again to critical acclaim but no commercial success. Springsteen’s songs became grander in form and scope, with the E Street Band providing a less folky, more R&B vibe and the lyrics often romanticizing teenage street life. “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” and “Incident on 57th Street” would become fan favorites, and the long, rousing “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” continues to rank among Springsteen’s most beloved concert numbers.

In the May 22, 1974, issue of Boston’s The Real Paper, music critic Jon Landau wrote after seeing a performance at the Harvard Square Theater, “I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time.” Landau subsequently became Springsteen’s manager and producer, helping to finish the epic new album, Born to Run. Given an enormous budget in a last-ditch effort at a commercially viable record, Springsteen became bogged down in the recording process while striving for a wall of sound production. But, fed by the release of an early mix of “Born to Run” to progressive rock radio, anticipation built toward the album’s release. All in all the album took more than 14 months to record, with six months alone spent on the song “Born To Run.” During this time Springsteen battled with anger and frustration over the album, saying he heard “sounds in [his] head” that he could not explain to the others in the studio. It was during these recording sessions that “Miami” Steve Van Zandt would stumble into the studio just in time to help Springsteen organize the horn section on “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” (it is his only written contribution to the album), and eventually led to his joining the E Street Band.[citation needed] Van Zandt had been a long-time friend of Springsteen, as well as a collaborator on earlier musical projects, and understood where he was coming from, which helped him to translate some of the sounds Springsteen was hearing. Still, by the end of the grueling recording sessions, Springsteen was not satisfied, and, upon first hearing the finished album, threw the record into the alley and told Jon Landau he would rather just cut the album live at The Bottom Line, a place he often played.[citation needed]

The woman in his life during this time was part-time-live-in 20-year-old Karen Darvin of Dallas, Texas, who was in New York City pursuing a career in dance.

19751983: Breakthrough

On August 13, 1975, Springsteen and the E Street Band began a five-night, 10-show stand at New York’s Bottom Line club. The engagement attracted major media attention, was broadcast live on WNEW-FM, and convinced many skeptics that Springsteen was for real. (Decades later, Rolling Stone Magazine would name the stand as one of the 50 Moments That Changed Rock and Roll.) With the release of Born to Run on August 25, 1975, Springsteen finally found success. The album peaked at number 3 on the Billboard 200, and while there were no hit singles, “Born to Run” (Billboard #23), “Thunder Road”, “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” (Billboard #83), and “Jungleland” all received massive album-oriented rock airplay and remain perennial favorites on many classic rock stations. The songwriting and recording was more disciplined than before, while still maintaining an epic feel. With its panoramic imagery, thundering production and desperate optimism, Born to Run is considered by some fans to be among the best rock and roll albums of all time and Springsteen’s finest work. It established him as a sincere and dynamic rock and roll personality who spoke for and in the voice of a large part of the rock audience. To cap off the triumph, Springsteen appeared on the covers of both Time and Newsweek in the same week, on October 27 of that year. So great did the wave of publicity become that Springsteen eventually rebelled against it during his first venture overseas, tearing down promotional posters before a concert appearance in London.

A legal battle with former manager Mike Appel kept Springsteen out of the studio for over two years, during which time he kept the E Street Band together through extensive touring across the U.S. Despite the optimistic fervor with which he often performed, the new songs he was writing and often debuting on stage had taken a more somber tone than much of his previous work. Reaching settlement with Appel in 1977, Springsteen finally returned to the studio, and the subsequent sessions produced Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978). Musically, this album was a turning point in Springsteen’s career. Gone were the raw, rapid-fire lyrics, outsized characters and long, multi-part musical compositions of the first two albums; now the songs were leaner and more carefully drawn and began to reflect Springsteen’s growing intellectual and political awareness. Some fans consider Darkness Springsteen’s best and most consistent record; tracks such as “Badlands” and “The Promised Land” became concert staples for decades to come, while the track “Prove It All Night” received a significant amount of album rock radio airplay. Other fans would prefer the work of the adventurous early Springsteen. The cross-country 1978 tour to promote the album would become legendary for the intensity and length of its shows.

By the late 1970s, Springsteen had earned a reputation in the pop world as a songwriter whose material could provide hits for other bands. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band had achieved a U.S. number one pop hit with a heavily rearranged version of “For You” and Greetings’ “Blinded by the Light” in early 1977. Patti Smith reached number 13 with her take on Springsteen’s unreleased “Because the Night” (which Smith co-wrote) in 1978, while The Pointer Sisters hit number two in 1979 with Springsteen’s also unreleased “Fire”.

Springsteen in concert on The River Tour. Drammenshallen, Drammen, Norway, May 5, 1981.

In September 1979, Springsteen and the E Street Band joined the Musicians United for Safe Energy anti-nuclear power collective at Madison Square Garden for two nights, playing an abbreviated set while premiering two songs from his upcoming album. The subsequent No Nukes live album, as well as the following summer’s No Nukes documentary film, represented the first official recordings and footage of Springsteen’s fabled live act, as well as Springsteen’s first tentative dip into political involvement.

Springsteen continued to consolidate his thematic focus on working-class life with the 20-song double album The River in 1980, which included an intentionally paradoxical range of material from good-time party rockers to emotionally intense ballads, and finally yielded his first hit Top Ten single as a performer, “Hungry Heart”. This album marked a shift in Springsteen’s music toward a pop-rock sound that was all but missing from any of his earlier work. This is apparent in the stylistic adoption of certain eighties pop-rock hallmarks like the reverberating-tenor drums, very basic percussion/guitar and repetitive lyrics apparent in many of the tracks. The title song pointed to Springsteen’s intellectual direction, while a couple of the lesser-known tracks presaged his musical direction. The album sold well, becoming his first topper on the Billboard Pop Albums chart, and a long tour in 1980 and 1981 followed, featuring Springsteen’s first extended playing of Europe and ending with a series of multi-night arena stands in major cities in the U.S.

The River was followed in 1982 by the stark solo acoustic Nebraska. According to the Marsh biographies, Springsteen was in a depressed state when he wrote this material, and the result is a brutal depiction of American life. The title track is about the murder spree of Charles Starkweather. According to Marsh, the album started as a demo tape for new work to be played with the E Street Band, but during the recording process Springsteen and producer Landau realized the songs worked better as solo acoustic numbers. Several studio sessions with the E Street Band led them to realize that the original recording, made in Springsteen’s home on a simple, low-tech four-track tape deck, were the best versions they were going to get. However, those sessions were not all for naught, as the band recorded several new songs that Springsteen had written in addition to the Nebraska material, including “Born in the U.S.A.” and “Glory Days”. These new songs would not be released until two years later, when they formed the basis of Springsteen’s next album.

While Nebraska did not sell well, it garnered widespread critical praise (including being named “Album of the Year” by Rolling Stone magazine’s critics) and influenced later significant works by other major artists, including U2’s album The Joshua Tree. It helped inspire the musical genre known as lo-fi music, becoming a cult favorite among indie-rockers. Springsteen did not tour in conjunction with Nebraska’s release.

19841991: Commercial and popular phenomenon

Springsteen probably is best known for his album Born in the U.S.A. (1984), which sold 15 million copies in the U.S. and became one of the best-selling albums of all time, with seven singles hitting the Top 10, and the massively successful world tour that followed it. The title track was a bitter commentary on the treatment of Vietnam veterans, some of whom were Springsteen’s friends and bandmates. The lyrics in the verses were entirely unambiguous when listened to, but the anthemic music and the title of the song made it hard for many, from politicians to the common person, to get the lyricsxcept those in the chorus, which could be read many ways. The song was widely misinterpreted as jingoistic, and in connection with the 1984 presidential campaign became the subject of considerable folklore. Springsteen also turned down several million dollars offered by the Chrysler Corporation to use the song in a car commercial. (In later years, to eliminate the bombast and make the song’s original meaning more explicitly clear, Springsteen performed the song accompanied only by acoustic guitar. An acoustic version also appeared on Tracks, a later album.) “Dancing in the Dark” was the biggest of seven hit singles from Born in the U.S.A., peaking at number 2 on the Billboard music charts. The music video for the song featured a young Courteney Cox dancing on stage with Springsteen, an appearance which helped kickstart the actress’s career. The song “Cover Me” was written by Springsteen for Donna Summer, but his record company persuaded him to keep it for the new album. A big fan of Summer’s work, Springsteen wrote another song for her, “Protection”. Videos for the album were made by noted film directors Brian De Palma and John Sayles. Springsteen was featured on the “We Are the World” song and album in 1985.

During the Born in the U.S.A. Tour, Springsteen met actress Julianne Phillips. They were married in Lake Oswego, Oregon, on May 13, 1985, surrounded by intense media attention. Opposites in background, their marriage was not long-lived. Springsteen’s 1987 album Tunnel of Love described some of his unhappinesses in the relationship, and during the subsequent Tunnel of Love Express tour, as reported by many tabloids, Springsteen took up with backup singer Patti Scialfa. Phillips and Springsteen filed for divorce in 1988. The divorce was finalized in 1989.

Springsteen performing on the Tunnel of Love Express at the Radrennbahn Weiensee in East Berlin on July 19, 1988.

The Born in the U.S.A. period represented the height of Springsteen’s visibility in popular culture and the broadest audience demographic he would ever reach (aided by the release of Arthur Baker’s dance mixes of three of the singles). Live/197585, a five-record box set (also on three cassettes or three CDs), was released near the end of 1986 and became the first box set to debut at number 1 on the U.S. album charts. It is one of the most commercially successful live albums of all time, ultimately selling 13 million units in the U.S. Live/197585 summed up Springsteen’s career to that point and displayed some of the elements that made his shows so powerful to his fans: the switching from mournful dirges to party rockers and back; the communal sense of purpose between artist and audience; the long, intense spoken passages before songs, including those describing Springsteen’s difficult relationship with his father; and the instrumental prowess of the E Street Band, such as in the long coda to “Racing in the Street”. Despite its popularity, some fans and critics felt the album’s song selection could have been better. Springsteen concerts are the subjects of frequent bootleg recording and trading among fans.

By the peak of Springsteen’s international megastardom in the mid-’80s there were no less than five Springsteen fanzines circulating at the same time in the UK, and many others elsewhere. Gary Desmond’s ‘Candy’s Room’, produced in Liverpool, was the first in 1980, quickly followed by Dan French’s ‘Point Blank’, Dave Percival’s ‘The Fever’, Jeff Matthews’ ‘Rendezvous’ and Paul Limbrick’s ‘Jackson Cage’. In the US, Backstreets Magazine started in Seattle and continues today as a glossy publication, now in communication with Springsteen’s management and official website.

After this commercial peak, Springsteen released the much more sedate and contemplative Tunnel of Love (1987), a mature reflection on the many faces of love found, lost and squandered, which only selectively used the E Street Band. It presaged the breakup of his marriage to Julianne Phillips. Reflecting the challenges of love in Brilliant Disguise, Springsteen sang:

I heard somebody call your name, from underneath our willow. I saw something tucked in shame, underneath your pillow. Well I’ve tried so hard baby, but I just can’t see. What a woman like you is doing with me.

The subsequent Tunnel of Love Express tour shook up fans with changes to the stage layout, favorites dropped from the set list, and horn-based arrangements. During the European leg in 1988, Springsteen’s relationship with Scialfa became public. Later in 1988, Springsteen headlined the worldwide Human Rights Now! tour for Amnesty International. In the fall of 1989 he dissolved the E Street Band, and he and Scialfa relocated to California. Springsteen married Scialfa in 1991. They have three children: Evan James (b. 1990), Jessica Rae (b. 1991) and Sam Ryan (b. 1994).

19922001: Artistic and commercial ups and downs

In 1992, after risking charges of “going Hollywood” by moving to Los Angeles (a radical move for someone so linked to the blue-collar life of the Jersey Shore) and working with session musicians, Springsteen released two albums at once. Human Touch and Lucky Town were even more introspective than any of his previous work and displayed a newly revealed confidence. As opposed to his first two albums, which dreamed of happiness, and his next four, which showed him growing to fear it, at points during the Lucky Town album, Springsteen actually claims happiness for himself.

Some E Street Band fans voiced (and continue to voice) a low opinion of these albums, especially Human Touch, and did not follow the subsequent “Other Band” Tour. Other fans, however, who had only come to know Springsteen after the 1975 consolidation of the E Street Band, found this tour an exciting opportunity to see Springsteen develop a working onstage relationship with a different group of musicians, and to see him explore the Asbury Park soul-and-gospel base in some of his classic material.

An electric band appearance on the acoustic MTV Unplugged television program (later released as In Concert/MTV Plugged) was poorly received and further cemented fan dissatisfaction. Springsteen seemed to realize this a few years hence when he spoke humorously of his late father during his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame acceptance speech:

I’ve gotta thank him because what would I conceivably have written about without him? I mean, you can imagine that if everything had gone great between us, we would have had disaster. I would have written just happy songs and I tried it in the early ’90s and it didn’t work; the public didn’t like it.

A multiple Grammy Award winner, Springsteen also won an Academy Award in 1994 for his song “Streets of Philadelphia”, which appeared on the soundtrack to the film Philadelphia. The song, along with the film, was applauded by many for its sympathetic portrayal of a gay man dying of AIDS.[citation needed] The music video for the song shows Springsteen’s actual vocal performance, recorded using a hidden microphone, to a prerecorded instrumental track.[citation needed] This technique was developed on the “Brilliant Disguise” video.

In 1995, after temporarily re-organizing the E Street Band for a few new songs recorded for his first Greatest Hits album (a recording session that was chronicled in the documentary Blood Brothers), he released his second (mostly) solo guitar album, The Ghost of Tom Joad, inspired by Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass, a book by Pulitzer Prize-winners author Dale Maharidge and photographer Michael Williamson. This was generally less well-received than the similar Nebraska, due to the minimal melody, twangy vocals, and political nature of most of the songs, although some praised it for giving voice to immigrants and others who rarely have one in American culture. The lengthy, worldwide, small-venue solo acoustic Ghost of Tom Joad Tour that followed successfully featured many of his older songs in drastically reshaped acoustic form, although Springsteen had to explicitly remind his audiences to be quiet and not to clap during the performances.

Following the tour, Springsteen moved back to New Jersey with his family. In 1998, Springsteen released the sprawling, four-disc box set of out-takes, Tracks. Subsequently, Springsteen would acknowledge that the 1990s were a “lost period” for him: “I didn’t do a lot of work. Some people would say I didn’t do my best work.”

Springsteen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999 by U2, a favor he returned in 2005.

In 1999, Springsteen and the E Street Band officially came together again and went on the extensive Reunion Tour, lasting over a year. Highlights included a record sold-out, 15-show run at Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey to kick off the American leg of the tour.

Springsteen’s Reunion Tour with the E Street Band ended with a triumphant ten-night, sold-out engagement at New York City’s Madison Square Garden in mid-2000 and controversy over a new song, “American Skin (41 Shots)”, about the police shooting of Amadou Diallo. The final shows at Madison Square Garden were recorded and resulted in an HBO Concert, with corresponding DVD and album releases as Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Live in New York City.

2002resent: Return to mainstream success

The scene outside the Giants Stadium parking lot for banner-marked, record-setting, 10-night stand of The Rising Tour during July 2003.

In 2002, Springsteen released his first studio effort with the full band in 18 years, The Rising, produced by Brendan O’Brien. The album, mostly a reflection on the September 11 attacks, was a critical and popular success. (Many of the songs were influenced by phone conversations Springsteen had with family members of victims of the attacks who in their obituaries had mentioned how his music touched their lives.) The title track gained airplay in several radio formats, and the record became Springsteen’s best-selling album of new material in 15 years. Kicked off by an early-morning Asbury Park appearance on The Today Show, The Rising Tour commenced, barnstorming through a series of single-night arena stands in the U.S. and Europe to promote the album in 2002, then returning for large-scale, multiple-night stadium shows in 2003. While Springsteen had maintained a loyal hardcore fan base everywhere (and particularly in Europe), his general popularity had dipped over the years in some southern and midwestern regions of the U.S. But it was still strong in Europe and along the U.S. coasts, and he played an unprecedented 10 nights in Giants Stadium in New Jersey, a ticket-selling feat to which no other musical act has come close. During these shows Springsteen thanked those fans who were attending multiple shows and those who were coming from long distances or another country; the advent of robust Bruce-oriented online communities had made such practices more common. The Rising Tour came to a final conclusion with three nights in Shea Stadium, highlighted by renewed controversy over “American Skin” and a guest appearance by Bob Dylan.

During the early 2000s, Springsteen became a visible advocate for the revitalization of Asbury Park, and played an annual series of winter holiday concerts there to benefit various local businesses, organizations, and causes. These shows were explicitly intended for the devoted fans, featuring numbers such as the unreleased (until Tracks) E Street Shuffle outtake “Thundercrack”, a rollicking group-participation song that would mystify casual Springsteen fans. He also frequently rehearses for tours in Asbury Park; some of his most devoted followers even go so far as to stand outside the building to hear what fragments they can of the upcoming shows. The song “My City of Ruins” was originally written about Asbury Park, in honor of the attempts to revitalize the city. Looking for an appropriate song for a post-Sept. 11 benefit concert honoring New York City, he selected “My City of Ruins,” which was immediately recognized as an emotional highlight of the concert, with its gospel themes and its heartfelt exhortations to “Rise up!” The song became associated with post-9/11 New York, and he chose it to close The Rising album and as an encore on the subsequent tour.

At the Grammy Awards of 2003, Springsteen performed The Clash’s “London Calling” along with Elvis Costello, Dave Grohl, and E Street Band member Steven Van Zandt and No Doubt’s bassist, Tony Kanal, in tribute to Joe Strummer; Springsteen and the Clash had once been considered multiple-album-dueling rivals at the time of the double The River and the triple Sandinista!. In 2004, Springsteen and the E Street Band participated in the “Vote for Change” tour, along with John Mellencamp, John Fogerty, the Dixie Chicks, Pearl Jam, R.E.M., Bright Eyes, the Dave Matthews Band, Jackson Browne, and other musicians. All concerts were to be held in swing states, to benefit the liberalism political organization group America Coming Together and to encourage people to register and vote. A finale was held in Washington, D.C., bringing many of the artists together. Several days later, Springsteen held one more such concert in New Jersey, when polls showed that state surprisingly close. While in past years Springsteen had played benefits for causes in which he believed against nuclear energy, for Vietnam veterans, Amnesty International, and the Christic Institute he had always refrained from explicitly endorsing candidates for political office (indeed he had rejected the efforts of Walter Mondale to attract an endorsement during the 1984 Reagan “Born in the U.S.A.” flap). This new stance led to criticism and praise from the expected partisan sources. Springsteen’s “No Surrender” became the main campaign theme song for John Kerry’s unsuccessful presidential campaign; in the last days of the campaign, he performed acoustic versions of the song and some of his other old songs at Kerry rallies.

An acoustic guitar number during the solo Devils & Dust Tour performance at the Festhalle Frankfurt, June 15, 2005.

Devils & Dust was released on April 26, 2005, and was recorded without the E Street Band. It is a low-key, mostly acoustic album, in the same vein as Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad although with a little more instrumentation. Some of the material was written almost 10 years earlier during, or shortly after, the Ghost of Tom Joad Tour, a couple of them being performed then but never released. The title track concerns an ordinary soldier’s feelings and fears during the Iraq War. Starbucks rejected a co-branding deal for the album, due in part to some sexually explicit content but also because of Springsteen’s anti-corporate politics. The album entered the album charts at No. 1 in 10 countries (United States, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Ireland). Springsteen began the solo Devils & Dust Tour at the same time as the album’s release, playing both small and large venues. Attendance was disappointing in a few regions, and everywhere (other than in Europe) tickets were easier to get than in the past. Unlike his mid-1990s solo tour, he performed on piano, electric piano, pump organ, autoharp, ukulele, banjo, electric guitar, and stomping board, as well as acoustic guitar and harmonica, adding variety to the solo sound. (Offstage synthesizer, guitar, and percussion were also used for some songs.) Unearthly renditions of “Reason to Believe”, “The Promised Land”, and Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream” jolted audiences to attention, while rarities, frequent set list changes, and a willingness to keep trying even through audible piano mistakes kept most of his loyal audiences happy.

In November 2005, Sirius Satellite Radio started a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week radio station on Channel 10 called E Street Radio. This channel featured commercial-free Bruce Springsteen music, including rare tracks, interviews, and daily concerts of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band recorded throughout their career.

Springsteen and The Sessions Band performing on their tour at the Fila Forum, Milan, Italy on May 12, 2006.

In April 2006, Springsteen released We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, an American roots music project focused around a big folk sound treatment of 15 songs popularized by the radical musical activism of Pete Seeger. It was recorded with a large ensemble of musicians including only Patti Scialfa, Soozie Tyrell, and The Miami Horns from past efforts. In contrast to previous albums, this was recorded in only three one-day sessions, and frequently one can hear Springsteen calling out key changes live as the band explores its way through the tracks. The Bruce Springsteen with The Seeger Sessions Band Tour began the same month, featuring the 18-strong ensemble of musicians dubbed The Seeger Sessions Band (and later shortened to the The Sessions Band). Seeger Sessions material was heavily featured, as well as a handful of (usually drastically rearranged) Springsteen numbers. The tour proved very popular in Europe, selling out everywhere and receiving some excellent reviews, but newspapers reported that a number of U.S. shows suffered from sparse attendance. By the end of 2006, the Seeger Sessions tour toured Europe twice and toured America for only a short span. Bruce Springsteen with The Sessions Band: Live in Dublin, containing selections from three nights of November 2006 shows at the The Point Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, was released the following June.

Springsteen performing with drummer Max Weinberg behind him, on the Magic Tour stop at Veterans Memorial Arena, Jacksonville, Florida, August 15, 2008.

Springsteen’s next album, titled Magic, was released on October 2, 2007. Recorded with the E Street Band, it featured 10 new Springsteen songs plus “Long Walk Home,” performed once with the Sessions band, and a hidden track (the first included on a Springsteen studio release), “Terry’s Song,” a tribute to Springsteen’s long-time assistant Terry Magovern who died on July 30, 2007. The first single, “Radio Nowhere,” was made available for a free download on August 28. On October 7, Magic debuted at number 1 in Ireland and the UK. Greatest Hits reentered the Irish charts at number 57, and Live in Dublin almost cracked the top 20 in Norway again. Sirius Satellite Radio also restarted E Street Radio on Channel 10 on September 27, 2007, in anticipation of Magic. Radio conglomerate Clear Channel Communications was alleged to have sent an edict to its classic rock stations to not play any songs from the new album, while continuing to play older Springsteen material. However, Clear Channel Adult Alternative (or “AAA”) station KBCO did play tracks from the album, undermining the allegations of a corporate blackout. The Springsteen and E Street Band Magic Tour began at the Hartford Civic Center with the album’s release and was routed through North America and Europe. Springsteen and the band performed live on NBC’s Today Show in advance of the opener. Longtime E Street Band organist Danny Federici went off the tour in November 2007 due to melanoma; he died on April 17, 2008, after a three-year battle with the disease.

Recent events

In April 2008, Springsteen announced his endorsement of U.S. Senator Barack Obama in his 2008 presidential campaign. In a video shot at an Ohio rally for Obama, Springsteen discussed the importance of “truth, transparency and integrity in government, the right of every American to have a job, a living wage, to be educated in a decent school, and a life filled with the dignity of work, the promise and the sanctity of home…But today those freedoms have been damaged and curtailed by eight years of a thoughtless, reckless and morally-adrift administration.”

On June 18, 2008, Springsteen appeared live from Europe at the Tim Russert tribute at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., to play one of Russert’s favorite songs, “Thunder Road.” Springsteen dedicated the song to Russert, who was “one of Springsteen’s biggest fans.”[citation needed]

Springsteen made a few solo acoustic performances in support of Obama’s campaign in October 2008, culminating with a November 2 rally where he debuted “Working On A Dream” in a duet with Scialfa.

Springsteen at a rally for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama

Cleveland, Ohio on November 2, 2008

On November 4, the first song played over the loudspeakers after Obama’s victory speech as president-elect in Chicago’s Grant Park was “The Rising”.

Springsteen’s Working on a Dream album was released in late January 2009.

Springsteen was the musical opener for the We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial on January 18, 2009 which was attended by over 400,000. He performed “The Rising” with an all-female choir. Later he performed Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” with Pete Seeger.

On January 11, 2009, Springsteen won the Golden Globe Award for Best Song for “The Wrestler”, from the Mickey Rourke film by the same name.

Springsteen performed at the halftime show at Super Bowl XLIII on February 1, 2009, agreeing to do it after many previous offers: t was sort of, well, if we don do it now, what are we waiting for? I want to do it while I alive.50] A few days before the game, Springsteen gave a rare press conference, where he promised a “twelve-minute party.” When asked if he would be nervous performing before such a large audience, Springsteen alluded to the “We Are One” concert, which took place at the Lincoln Memorial: “Youl have a lot of crazy football fans, but you won have Lincoln staring over your shoulder. That takes some of the pressure off.” His 12:45 set, with the E Street Band and the Miami Horns, included abbreviated renditions of “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”, “Born to Run”, “Working on a Dream,” and “Glory Days,” the latter complete with football references. The set of appearances and promotional activities led Springsteen to say, “This has probably been the busiest month of my life.”

On April 1, 2009, Springsteen kicked off the Working on a Dream Tour in San Jose, California. The tour was hit by controversy in February 2009 when ticket site and tour partner Ticketmaster was found to be redirecting customers to their subsidiary TicketsNow, where tickets were being sold at inflated prices, despite the availability of face-value tickets elsewhere. Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff issued a swift apology, following a furious statement from Springsteen, who accused the site of “the abuse of our fans and our trust”. The tour’s shows featured few songs from the new album, with instead set lists dominated by Springsteen classics and selections reflecting the ongoing late-2000s recession. The tour also featured Springsteen playing songs requested by audience members holding up signs usually garage rock or punk rock classics or older, more obscure entries in Springsteen’s back catalog in a practice dating back to the final stages of the Magic Tour. Drummer Max Weinberg was replaced for some shows by his 18-year-old son Jay Weinberg, so that the former could serve his role as bandleader on the debuting The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.

Springsteen was part of the lineup of The Clearwater Concert, a celebration of Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday which took place on May 3, 2009 at Madison Square Garden.

Fireworks go off at the conclusion of the “E! Street! Band!” exhortation during the final shows at Giants Stadium.

During the Working on a Dream Tour, Springsteen and the band made their first real foray in the world of music festivals, headlining nights at the Pinkpop Festival in the Netherlands, the Bonnaroo Music Festival in the United States where Springsteen also sat in with Phish for three songs and the Glastonbury Festival and Hard Rock Calling in the UK. He also was the headliner of the Festival des Vieilles Charrues in Brittany, France in July, his only tour stop in France. His son Evan participated in the concert, playing guitar.

During a stretch of five final shows at his homestate Giants Stadium, Bruce Springsteen opened the shows with a brand new song dedicated to the “old lady” (and told from its perspective), named “Wrecking Ball”. The song highlights the historic stadium, and his Jersey roots. The stand, as well as some other shows on the U.S. third leg of the tour, featured full album presentations of Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, or Born in the U.S.A.

The tour ended as scheduled in Buffalo, NY in November 2009 amid speculation that it was the last performance ever by the E Street Band, but during the show Springsteen said it was goodbye or a little while.

In October, 2009, Bruce Springsteen was among the headline acts of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 25th anniversary benefit concert along with artists like U2, Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin.

On December 6, 2009, Springsteen was among the recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors, an annual award to figures from the world of arts for their contribution to American culture.. This is probably the highest honor Mr. Springsteen has received yet. Prior to the official ceremony at the Kennedy Center, the six cultural icons were hosted by President Obama and Ms. Michelle Obama. During the speech by the President, he talked about how Springsteen has incorporated the life of regular Americans in his expansive pallette of songs and how his concerts are beyond the typical rock-and-roll concerts, how apart from being high-energy concerts they are “communions”. President Obama ended with the remark: “On days like the “We Are One” concert and today we are reminded that while I am the president, He is The Boss”. During the official awards show on December 6, 2009, tributes were paid by several well-known celebrities like Jon Stewart, Ben Stiller, Eddie Vedder, Sting and Melissa Etheridge.

Jon Stewart opened with a funny albeit touching tribute to Mr. Springsteen: “I am not a music critic. Nor historian, nor archivist. I cannot tell you where Bruce Springsteen falls in the pantheon of the American songbook. I cannot illuminate the context of his work, or its roots in the folk and oral history traditions of our great nations. But I am from New Jersey. So, I can tell you what I believe. And what I believe is that Bob Dylan and James Brown had a baby. Yes! And they abandoned this child, as you can imagine at the timeinterracial, same sex relationships being what they werethey abandoned this baby by the side of the road between the exit interchanges 8A and 9 on the Jersey Turnpikethat child was Bruce Springsteen.” He continued, “I believe that Bruce Springsteen is an unprecedented combination of lyrical eloquence, musical mastery and sheer unbridled, unadulterated joy. Exuberance in the act of telling stories so familiar, stories that have never been told so well or so uniquely. And I know he hating this right now. He a modest man, and he doesn like sitting there in that little box, with his little suit, wearing a little rainbow dreamcatcher or whatever they have on therehe doesn like it. He wishes he had his guitar and that I would shut up, but I will not. He is the BossBut I didn understand his music for a long time, until I began to yearn. Until I began to question the things that I was making and doing in my own life. Until I realized that it wasn just about the joyful parade on stage and the theatrics. It was about stories of lives that could be changed. And that the only status that you could fail to achieve is the status quo. The only thing, the only failure in life was not to make the effort to change our station. And it resonated with me because, and I say this truly to him… I would not be here, God knows, not even in this business if it were not for the inspirational words and music of Bruce Springsteen.”

Golden Globe Award-winning writer Ron Kovic then took the stage, explaining how he first met Bruce Springsteen at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in Hollywood in 1978. A chance encounter led to an exchange of the artists work, and a friendship was born between the Born on the Fourth of July author and Vietnam Veteran and the Born in the U.S.A. musician. Kovic introduced Springsteen musical tribute, which began with the Rob Mathes All-Star band performing 10th Avenue Freeze Out, followed by Grammy Award-winning musician John Mellencamp crooning Born in the U.S.A.. It was then followed by a medley of My Father House, Glory Days and I on Fire by multi-Grammy winners Ben Harper and Jennifer Nettles, accompanied by the Rob Mathes band. Grammy Award and Academy Award-winning musician Melissa Etheridge rocked out a concert-version of Born to Run, followed by Grammy Award and Golden Globe Award-winning singer Eddie Vedder explosive rendition of My City of Ruins. Finally, musical powerhouse Sting, himself a multiple Grammy, Golden Globe and Emmy Award winner, ended the night with a memorable performance of The Rising, joined by The Joyce Garrett Choir and the rest of the performers for the evening rousing conclusion. Throughout the tribute show, President Obama, Ms. Obama and the other recipients looked on admiringly at the towering personality of Mr. Springsteen.

On January 22, 2010, Bruce joined many well-known artists to perform on Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief, organized by George Clooney to raise money to help the victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

The 2000s ended with Springsteen being named one of eight Artists of the Decade by Rolling Stone magazine and with Springsteen’s tours ranking him fourth among artists in total concert grosses for the decade.

Personal life

Springsteen family greets Obama family on stage at rally in Cleveland, Ohio on November 2, 2008.

Springsteen was a bachelor until the age of 35, when he married 25 year old Julianne Phillips (born May 6, 1960) in Lake Oswego, Oregon on May 13, 1985. The marriage helped her acting career flourish, although the two were opposites in background, and his traveling took its toll on their relationship. The final blow came when Bruce began an affair with Patti Scialfa (born July 29, 1953), whom he had dated briefly in 1984 shortly after she joined the band. Phillips and Springsteen separated in the spring of 1988, and on August 30, 1988, Julianne filed for divorce. The Springsteen/Phillips divorce was finalized on March 1, 1989.

After his wife filed for divorce in 1988, Bruce began living with Scialfa. Springsteen received much criticism for the hastiness in which he and Scialfa took their relationship. In a 1995 interview with The Advocate, Springsteen spoke about the negative publicity the couple subsequently received. “It’s a strange society that assumes it has the right to tell people whom they should love and whom they shouldn’t. But the truth is, I basically ignored the entire thing as much as I could. I said, “Well, all I know is, this feels real, and maybe I have got a mess going here in some fashion, but that’s life.” In 1990, Springsteen and Scialfa welcomed their first child, son Evan James. They were expecting their second child, daughter Jessica Rae (born December 30, 1991), when Bruce and Patti married on June 8, 1991. “I went through a divorce, and it was really difficult and painful and I was very frightened about getting married again. So part of me said, Hey, what does it matter? But it does matter. It’s very different than just living together. First of all, stepping up publicly- which is what you do: You get your license, you do all the social rituals- is a part of your place in society and in some way part of society’s acceptance of you…Patti and I both found that it did mean something.” The couple’s youngest child, Sam Ryan, was born on January 5, 1994. The family lives in Rumson, New Jersey, and owns a horse farm in nearby Colts Neck. Springsteen also owns two adjacent homes in Wellington, Florida, a wealthy horse community near West Palm Beach. His eldest son, Evan, is currently a sophomore at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, a village in Newton, Massachusetts. His daughter Jessica Springsteen is a nationally-ranked champion equestrian.

In November 2000, Springsteen filed legal action against Jeff Burgar which accused him of registering the domain brucespringsteen.com (along with several other celebrity domains) in bad faith to funnel web users to his Celebrity 1000 portal site. Once the legal complaint was filed, Burgar pointed the domain to a Springsteen biography and message board. In February 2001, Springsteen lost his dispute with Burgar. A WIPO panel ruled 2 to 1 in favor of Burgar.

The October 26, 2009 show for the Working on a Dream Tour in Kansas City, Missouri was canceled an hour before its scheduled start time due to the death of Lenny Sullivan, Springsteen’s cousin and assistant road manager.

Springsteen has led a relatively quiet and private life for a well-known popular performer and artist. He moved from Los Angeles to New Jersey in the early 1990s specifically to raise a family in a non-paparazzi environment. The Super Bowl XLIII press conference regarding the halftime show took place more than 25 years since his last press conference. However, he has appeared in few radio interviews, most notably on NPR and BBC. 60 minutes aired his last extensive interview on TV before his tour to support his album, Magic.

E Street Band

Main article: E Street Band

The E Street Band is considered to have started in October 1972, even though it was not officially known as such until September 1974. The E Street Band was inactive from the end of 1988 through early 1999, except for a brief reunion in 1995.

Current members

Bruce Springsteen lead vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano

Garry Tallent bass guitar, tuba

Clarence “Big Man” Clemons saxophone, percussion, backing vocals

Max Weinberg drums, percussion (joined September 1974)

Roy Bittan piano, synthesizer (joined September 1974)

Steven Van Zandt lead guitar, backing vocals, mandolin (officially joined July 1975 after playing in previous bands; left in 1984 to go solo; rejoined in early 1995, however made appearances during the “Other Band” Tour).

Nils Lofgren guitar, pedal steel guitar, backing vocals (replaced Steve Van Zandt in June 1984; remained in group after Van Zandt returned)

Patti Scialfa backing and duet vocals, acoustic guitar, percussion (joined June 1984; became Springsteen’s wife in 1991)

Soozie Tyrell violin, acoustic guitar, percussion, backing vocals (joined 2002, occasional appearances before that)

Charles Giordano organ, accordion, glockenspiel (originally a Sessions Band member, joined the E Street Band on a temporary basis in late 2007, during the illness of Danny Federici. Continued playing with the E Street Band after Federici died in April 2008.)

Former members

Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez drums (inception through February 1974, when asked to resign)

David Sancious keyboards (June 1973 to August 1974)

Ernest “Boom” Carter drums (February to August 1974)

Suki Lahav violin, backing vocals (September 1974 to March 1975)

Danny Federici organ, accordion, glockenspiel (died on April 17, 2008, melanoma)

Jay Weinberg drums, percussion (substituting for his father during parts of the 2009 tour)

Film

Music used in films

Springsteen’s music has long been intertwined with film. His music was first linked with the silver screen in the 1983 John Sayles’ film Baby, Its You, which featured several songs from Born to Run. The relationship Springsteen established with Sayles would re-surface in later years, with Sayles directing videos for songs from Born in the U.S.A. and Tunnel of Love. The song “(Just Around the Corner to the) Light of Day” was written for the early Michael J. Fox/Joan Jett vehicle Light of Day.

His original work has frequently been used in films and he won an Oscar for his song “Streets of Philadelphia” from the Jonathan Demme film Philadelphia (1993). He was nominated for a second Oscar for “Dead Man Walkin’”, from the movie Dead Man Walking (1995).

His song “Missing” plays during the opening credits of Sean Penn’s 1995 movie, The Crossing Guard. It was released in 2003 on “The Essential Bruce Springsteen.”

His song “Secret Garden”, which first appeared on 1995’s Greatest Hits, was used in Cameron Crowe’s 1996 film Jerry Maguire.

Although it doesn’t appear on the soundtrack album, his song “Iceman” was used in the 2007 movie In the Land of Women.

Springsteen also wrote an eponymous song for Darren Aronofsky’s 2008 film The Wrestler. The song was awarded a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and nominated for the MTV Movie Award as “Best Song From a Movie”.

The album “The River” was also well mentioned in the movie Reign Over Me with Adam Sandler. Two songs from that very album, “Drive All Night” and “Out In The Streets”, were played as background music.

In the 1997 film Cop Land, Sylvester Stallone’s character plays the songs “Drive All Night” and “Stolen Car” from The River on his turntable.

His track, “Hungry Heart” was used as a background song in the movies “A Perfect Storm,” The Wedding Singer and Risky Business. The track, “The Fuse” from his album, The Rising, was used during the end credits of the Spike Lee film, 25th Hour.

More recently, his song, “Lucky Town” from his album of the same name was used in the Eric Bana and Drew Barrymore starring movie, Lucky You in the starting title track. The 2007 movie, In the land of women used the song, ‘Iceman’ from the album Tracks as part of its OST.

Films inspired by music

In turn, films have been inspired by his music, including The Indian Runner, written and directed by Sean Penn, which Penn has specifically noted as being inspired by Springsteen’s song “Highway Patrolman”.

Kevin Smith is an admitted fan of fellow New Jersey native Springsteen and named his film Jersey Girl after the Tom Waits song which Springsteen made famous. The song was also used on the soundtrack.

Acting

Springsteen made his first on-screen appearance as a cameo in High Fidelity and it was voted “Best Cameo in a Movie” at the MTV Movie Awards.

Discography

Main article: Bruce Springsteen discography

Major studio albums (along with their chart positions in the U.S. Billboard 200 at the time of release):

1973: Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. ()

1973: The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle ()

1975: Born to Run (#3)

1978: Darkness on the Edge of Town (#5)

1980: The River (#1)

1982: Nebraska (#3)

1984: Born in the U.S.A. (#1)

1987: Tunnel of Love (#1)

1992: Human Touch (#2)

1992: Lucky Town (#3)

1995: The Ghost of Tom Joad (#11)

2002: The Rising (#1)

2005: Devils & Dust (#1)

2006: We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (#3)

2007: Magic (#1)

2009: Working on a Dream (#1)

Awards and recognition

Bruce Springsteen (second from right) was among the five recipients of the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors

Grammy Awards

Springsteen has won 20 Grammy Awards, as follows (years shown are the year the award was given for, not the year in which the ceremony was held):

Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male, 1984, “Dancing in the Dark”

Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male, 1987, “Tunnel of Love”

Song of the Year, 1994, “Streets of Philadelphia”

Best Rock Song, 1994, “Streets of Philadelphia”

Best Rock Vocal Performance, Solo, 1994, “Streets of Philadelphia”

Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television, 1994, “Streets of Philadelphia”

Best Contemporary Folk Album, 1996, The Ghost of Tom Joad

Best Rock Album, 2002, The Rising

Best Rock Song, 2002, “The Rising”

Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, 2002, “The Rising”

Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, 2003, “Disorder in the House” (with Warren Zevon)

Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, 2004, “Code of Silence”

Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, 2005, “Devils & Dust”

Best Traditional Folk Album, 2006, The Seeger Sessions: We Shall Overcome

Best Long Form Music Video, 2006, Wings For Wheels: The Making Of Born to Run

Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, 2007, “Radio Nowhere”

Best Rock Song, 2007, “Radio Nowhere”

Best Rock Instrumental Performance, 2007, “Once Upon a Time in the West”

Best Rock Song, 2008, “Girls in Their Summer Clothes”

Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, 2009, “Working on a Dream”

Only one of these awards has been one of the cross-genre “major” ones (Song, Record, or Album of the Year); he has been nominated a number of other times for the majors, but failed to win.

Golden Globe Awards

Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for “Streets of Philadelphia” in 1994.

Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for “The Wrestler” in 2009.

Academy Awards

Academy Award for Best Original Song, 1993, “Streets of Philadelphia” from Philadelphia.

Emmy Awards

The Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Live In New York City HBO special won two technical Emmy Awards in 2001.

Other recognition

Polar Music Prize in 1997.

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 1999.

Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, 1999.

Inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame, 2007.

“Born to Run” named “The unofficial youth anthem of New Jersey” by the New Jersey state legislature; something Springsteen always found to be ironic, considering that the song “is about leaving New Jersey”.

The minor planet 23990, discovered Sept. 4, 1999, by I. P. Griffin at Auckland, New Zealand, was officially named in his honor.

Ranked #23 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

Made Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People Of The Year 2008 list.

Won Critic’s Choice Award for Best Song with “The Wrestler” in 2009.

Performed at the Super Bowl XLIII half time show.

Kennedy Center Honors, 2009.

Influence

In addition to his noted influence on music in his native New Jersey, Springsteen is also cited as an influence by Bon Jovi, Arcade Fire, Gaslight Anthem, The Constantines, The Hold Steady, The National, Kings of Leon, The Killers, U2, Johnny Cash in his later recordings, and countless others. His songs have been covered by diverse artists such as Melissa Etheridge, Johnny Cash, McFLY, Tegan and Sara, Damien Jurado, Aimee Mann, Social Distortion, Rage Against The Machine, Ben Harper, Eric Bachmann, Josh Ritter, Frank Turner, and Hank Williams III, in addition to above-noted bands like Arcade Fire and The National.

See also

List of best selling music artists

List of artists who reached number one on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart

References

Alterman, Eric. It Ain’t No Sin To Be Glad You’re Alive : The Promise of Bruce Springsteen. Little Brown, 1999. ISBN 0-316-03885-7.

Coles, Robert. Bruce Springsteen’s America: The People Listening, a Poet Singing. Random House, 2005. ISBN 0-375-50559-8.

Cross, Charles R. Backstreets: Springsteen the man and his music Harmony Books, New York 1989/1992. ISBN 0-517-58929-X. Contains 15+ interviews and a complete list of all Springsteen songs including unreleased compositions. Complete lising of all concerts 19651990 most of them with tracklists. Hundreds of previously unreleased high quality color pictures.

Cullen, Jim. Born in the U.S.A.: Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition. 1997; Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005. New edition of 1997 study book places Springsteen’s work in the broader context of American history and culture. ISBN 0-8195-6761-2

Eliot, Marc with Appel, Mike. Down Thunder Road. Simon & Schuster, 1992. ISBN 0-671-86898-5.

Graff, Gary. The Ties That Bind: Bruce Springsteen A to E to Z. Visible Ink, 2005. ISBN 1-57859-151-1.

Guterman, Jimmy. Runaway American Dream: Listening to Bruce Springsteen. Da Capo, 2005. ISBN 0-306-81397-1.

Hilburn, Robert. Springsteen. Rolling Stone Press, 1985. ISBN 0-684-18456-7.

Knobler, Peter with special assistance from Greg Mitchell. “Who Is Bruce Springsteen and Why Are We Saying All These Wonderful Things About Him?”, Crawdaddy, March 1973.

Marsh, Dave. Bruce Springsteen: Two Hearts : The Definitive Biography, 19722003. Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0-415-96928-X. (Consolidation of two previous Marsh biographies, Born to Run (1981) and Glory Days (1987).)

Wolff, Daniel. 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land. Bloomsbury, 2005. ISBN 1-58234-509-0.

Further reading

Greetings from E Street: The Story of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Chronicle Books, 2006. ISBN 0-8118-5348-9.

Days of Hope and Dreams: An Intimate Portrait of Bruce Springsteen. Billboard Books, 2003. ISBN 0-8230-8387-X.

Racing in the Street: The Bruce Springsteen Reader. Penguin, 2004. ISBN 0-14-200354-9.

Runaway American Dream: Listening to Bruce …

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Vietnam Classic Tour

By: Green Trail Tours
Posted: Apr 12, 2009

Vietnam Classic Tour

Code: VN01 Routes: Saigon – Phan Thiet – Nha Trang -Da Nang – Hoi An – Hue – Hai phong -Ha Long – Hanoi Duration: 11 Days

Itinerary in brief
Day 1:  Saigon – Arrival
Day 2 : Saigon
Day 3 : Saigon – Phan Thiet – Nha Trang
Day 4:  Nha Trang
Day 5 : Nha Trang – Danang – Hoi An
Day 6 : Hoi An – Hue
Day 7:  Hue
Day 8:  Hue – Hanoi
Day 9 : Hanoi – Halong
Day 10 : Halong – Hanoi
Day 11:  Hanoi – Departure

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Detail Itinerary

Day 1:  Saigon – Arrival
On arrival at Tan San Nhat Airport, you are met and transferred to hotel. Ho Chi Minh City is a center of commerce, finance, culture and tourism in Vietnam. This bustling metropolis ,contradiction of its northern counterpart, is crowded with bikes and motorbikes, excited by numerous shopping area and sidewalk cafés. ( If time permits) we stroll around the down town to explore the different local ways of life.Overnight in Saigon.

Day 2 : Saigon [ B]
Sightseeing in Saigon and Cholon (Chinatown)8 hrs
Saigon is the largest of Vietnamese cities, with the hustle and bustle of Vietnamese life visible everywhere. There are street markets, sidewalk cafes and sleek new bars. The city churns and bubbles. Yet within this teeming metropolis are 300 years of timeless traditions and the beauty of an ancient culture. To the west of the city is District 5, the huge Chinese neighborhood called Cholon, which means ‘Big Market’.NOTRE DAME CATHEDRAL: built between 1877 and 1883 and set in the heart of Saigon’s government quarter. It has a neo-Romanesque form and two high square towers, tipped with iron spires. In front of the cathedral is a statue of the Virgin Mary.CENTRAL POST OFFICE: a French-style building with a glass canopy and iron frame, situated next to the Notre Dame Cathedral. The structure was built between 1886 and 1891 and is by far the largest post office in Vietnam.CITY HALL: completed in 1908, also known as “Hotel de Ville”, and located at the northern end of Nguyen Hue Boulevard. With its ornate gingerbread façade, it looks like the town hall of a French town. (May be viewed from the outside only).OPERA HOUSE: built around the turn of the century and first renovated in the 1940s, the building housed the lower division of the National Assembly. Today it is a Municipal Theatre and also known as the Saigon Concert Hall. (May be viewed from the outside only).JADE EMPEROR PAGODA: was a key meeting place for Chinese secret societies. It has very colorful and mysterious ambience.
REUNIFICATION PALACE: this was the Independence Palace of the South Vietnamese president and was stormed by tanks on 30 April 1975, signifying the fall of South Vietnam. It has been preserved in its original state.WAR REMNANTS MUSEUM: collections of weapons and photographs from two Indochina wars are exhibited along with the original French ‘Guillotine’ brought here in the early 20th century.
BEN THANH MARKET: the central market of Saigon, its surrounding streets make up one of the city’s liveliest areas. Everything commonly eaten, worn or used by the average resident of Saigon is available here.GIAC LAM PAGODA: the oldest pagoda in Saigon, built at the end of the 17th century. Because the last reconstruction here was in 1900, the architecture, layout and ornamentation remain almost unaltered by the modernist renovations that have transformed so many other religious structures in Vietnam. Ten monks live in this pagoda, which also incorporates aspects of Taoism and Confucianism.
BINH TAY MARKET: Cholon’s main marketplace, much of the business conducted here is wholesale.THIEN HAU PAGODA: built by the Cantonese congregation in the early 19th century. The pagoda is one of the most active in Cholon and is dedicated to Thien Hau. It is said that she can travel over the oceans on a mat and ride the clouds to wherever she pleases.Overnight in Saigon

Day 3 : Saigon – Phan Thiet – Nha Trang [ B]
By vehicle from Saigon to Phan Thiet
Located in Binh Thuan province, Phan Thiet is 198 km from Saigon and it lies south of Cam Ranh bay on the southernmost stretch of Central Vietnam.Phan Thiet is best known for its nuoc man (fish sauce) and fishing industry.The population includes descendents of the Chams, who controlled this area until 1962. Mui Ne Beach is famous for its enormous sand dunes and is located twenty-two kilometers east of Phan Thiet, near a fishing village at the tip of the Mui Ne Peninsula. Journey north along the coast and Highway 1 past Phan Rang, Lam and Dien Khanh. Ninh Tuan Province, where Phan Rang is located, is home to tens of thousands of descendents of the Cham people.PO KLONG GARAI CHAM TOWERS: the four brick towers constructed at the end of the 13th century, during the reign of the Cham monarch Jaya Simhavarman III, were built as Hindu temples and stand on the top of a crumbly granite hill.Overnight in Nha Trang.

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Day 4:  Nha Trang [ B]
Excursion by boat to various islands and the seawater aquarium
EBONY ISLAND: just south east of Bamboo Island, it is known for snorkeling.
HON TAM: southwest of Bamboo Island, Hon Tam is similar to the nearby Ebony Island.SEAWATER AQUARIUM: Mieu Island has an important fish-breeding farm where over forty species of fish, crustaceans and other marine life are raised in three separate compartments.Overnight in Nha Trang.

Day 5 : Nha Trang – Danang – Hoi An [ B]
Transfer from Nha Trang to Cam Ranh Airport
Flight from Nha Trang to Danang
Sightseeing in Danang, China Beach and the Marble Mountains
Vietnam’s fourth largest city marks the northern limits of Vietnam’s tropical zone, boasting a pleasant year-round climate.CHAM MUSEUM: founded in 1915 by the Ecole Francaise d’Extreme Orient, the open-air collection of Cham sculpture is the finest in the world. Many of the sandstone carvings are breathtaking.CHINA BEACH: made famous in the American TV series of the same name, it stretches for many kilometers north and south of the Marble Mountains. During the war, American soldiers were airlifted here for ‘rest and relaxation’.MARBLE MOUNTAINS: five stone hillocks, once islands, made of marble. Each is said to represent one of the five elements of the universe. The largest and most famous, Thuy Son, has a number of natural caves in which Buddhist sanctuaries have been built over the centuries. When the Champas ruled this area, these same caves were used as Hindu shrines.Journey south past the Marble Mountains and small villages.Sightseeing Hoi An by cyclo Hoi An is a picturesque riverside town south of Danang. Known as Faifo to early western traders, it was one of South East Asia’s major international ports during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. It is best to visit some of the following sites of Hoi An by walking around and/or by cyclo.QUAN CONG TEMPLE: founded in 1653, the main altar is dedicated to Quan Cong, whose partially gilded statue is in the central altar at the back of the sanctuary. Stone plaques on the walls list contributors to the contruction and repair of the temple. The temple was open to all Chinese traders or seamen and is dedicated to Thien Hau — it’s a small chinese style temple with a lintel gate, a rockery courtyard and lucky animals depicted in statuary.PHUOC KIEN PAGODA: Chinese pagoda built around 1690 and then restored and enlarged in 1900. It is typical of the Chinese ‘clans’ that were established in the Hoi An area. The temple is dedicated to Thien Hau Thanh Mau (Goddess of the Sea and Protector of Sailors and Fishermen).
JAPANESE COVERED BRIDGE: the first bridge on this site was constructed in 1593. It was built by the Japanese community of Hoi An to link them with the Chinese quarters across the stream. The bridge was provided with a roof so it could be used as a shelter from rain and sun.TRAN FAMILY CHAPEL: this house for worshipping ancestors was built about 200 years ago with donations from the family members. The Tran family traces its origins to China and moved to Vietnam around 1700. The architecture of the building reflects the influence of Chinese and Japanese styles.SA HUYNH MUSEUM: located near the Japanese covered Bridge, it contains exhibitions from the earliest period of Hoi An’s history.PHUNG HUNG HOUSE: one family has been living here for already 8 generations. The house is a combination of Vietnamese, Japanese and Chinese style.Overnight in Hoi An.

Day 6 : Hoi An – Hue [ B]
By vehicle from Hoi An to Hue
Journey north along Highway 1 past Danang, Lang Co and the Hai Van Pass.
HAI VAN PASS: the pass crosses over a spur of the Truong Son Mountain Range that juts into the South China Sea. It is an incredible mountainous stretch of highway with spectacular views. LANG CO: a pretty, island-like stretch of palm-shaded sand with a crystal-clear lagoon on one side and many kilometers of beachfront facing the South China Sea.IMPERIAL CITY: located in the Citadel, it was built in the early 19th century and modeled after the Forbidden City in Peking. There are numerous palaces and temples within these walls, as well as towers, a library and a museum.NGO MON GATE: the principal entrance to the Imperial Enclosure, facing the Flag Tower. The central passageway with its yellow doors was reserved for use by the emperor, as was the bridge across the lotus pond. THAI HOA PALACE: built in 1803 and moved to its present site in 1833, Thai Hoa Palace is a spacious hall with an ornate roof of huge timbers supported by 80 carved and lacquered columns.HALLS OF THE MANDARINS: these buildings, in which the mandarins prepared for court ceremonies held in the Can Chanh Reception Hall, were restored in 1977.NINE DYNASTIC URNS: these were cast in 1835-36. Traditional ornamentation was then chiseled into the sides of the urns, each dedicated to a different Nguyen sovereign. FORBIDDEN PURPLE CITY: this was reserved for the personal use of the emperor. The only servants allowed into the compound were eunuchs, who would pose no threat to the royal concubines. (Today the site is in ruins).Overnight in Hue.

Day 7:  Hue [ B]
Sightseeing Thien Mu Pagoda and Tomb of Emperor Minh Mang with boat trip
THIEN MU PAGODA: just outside of Hue, on the bank of the Perfume River, this was a hotbed of anti-government protest during the early 1960s. Behind the main sanctuary of the pagoda is the Austin motorcar which transported the monk Thich Quang Duc to the site of his 1963 self-immolation.TOMB OF EMPEROR MINH MANG: a complex built in 1840 by King Minh Mang, known for its magnificent architecture, military statuaries and elaborate decorations. It is perhaps the most beautiful of Hue’s pagodas and tombs.
TU DUC TOMB: once the Royal Palace of Tu Duc, who ruled Hue more than 100 years ago, this tomb consists of pavilions in a tranquil setting of forested hills and lakes. The tomb was constructed between 1864 and 1867. Tu Duc, who was the longest reigning Emperor, lived a luxurious life.DONG BA MARKET: a local market near the Imperial City.Overnight in Hue.

Day 8:  Hue – Hanoi [ B]
Flight from Hue to Hanoi
Visit Old Quarters by cyclo
OLD QUARTERS: they have well over a thousand years of history and remain one of Vietnam’s most lively and unusual places, where one can buy anything from a gravestone to silk pyjamas. Exploring the maze of back streets is fascinating and there are endless things to buy wool clothes, cosmetics, gold and silver jewellery, silk clothes and herbal medicines. WATER PUPPET SHOW: a fantastic art form originating in northern Vietnam, best seen in Hanoi. The Municipal Water Puppet Theater is located on the shore of Hoan Kiem Lake.Overnight in Hanoi.

Day 9 : Hanoi – Halong  [ B]
Sightseeing in Hanoi (half day)
Hanoi, a city of lakes, shaded boulevards and public parks, is the capital of Vietnam. It is a very attractive city with French style buildings and less traffic than other cities in Asia.
ONE PILLAR PAGODA: built by the Emperor Ly Thai Tong, who ruled from 1028 to 1054. Constructed of wood on a single stone pillar, it is designed to resemble a lotus blossom. TEMPLE OF LITERATURE: founded in 1070 by Emperor Ly Thanh Tong, who dedicated it to Confucius in order to honor scholars and men of literary accomplishment. HOAN KIEM LAKE: right in the heart of Hanoi, this lake contains an islet with the tiny Tortoise Pagoda, topped with a red star. HO CHI MINH MAUSOLEUM: in the tradition of Lenin and Stalin before him and Mao after him, the final resting place of Ho Chi Minh is a glass sarcophagus set deep in the bowels of a monumental edifice that has become a site of pilgrimage. (Closed Mondays and Fridays).
OPERA HOUSE: a magnificent 900-seat opera house built in 1911. (May be viewed from the outside only).
Visit Chua But Thap Pagoda
By vehicle from Hanoi to Halong Bay
Journey east along Highway 5 across Hai Hung Province and around Halong Bay.
Overnight in Halong.

Day 10 : Halong – Hanoi [ B, L]
Boat trip Halong Bay (4 hours)
This four-hour boat ride explores Halong Bay, passing the islands of Trong, Mai, Am, Chen and Cong Troi (Heaven Gates). Stop at one of the islands and visit of one of the following caves.HANG DAU GO: a huge, three-chambered cave, which is reached via 90 steps. The cave derives its Vietnamese name from the third of the chambers, which is said to have been used by Trang Hung Dao during the 13th century to store bamboo stakes used against the Mongol invaders. BO NAU: the “Pelican” caves. THIEN CUNG: “Heaven Palace.”
By vehicle from Halong to Hanoi
Journey around Halong Bay to Hai Phong and west along Highway 5, across Hai Hung Province.

Day 11:  Hanoi – Departure [ B]
today we have free time until transfer to airport for your flight to your home .

Green Trail Tours – About the Author:

www.greentrail-indochina.com
www.greentrailtourism.com

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/travel-articles/vietnam-classic-tour-862494.html

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Originally published here.

Night Eating Syndrome was first recognized back in 1955 and reported in The American Journal of Medicine but it is only in the past few years that more attention has been paid to it and research conducted into the syndrome.

NES is characterized by eating comforter foods that are high in sugar and fat such as biscuits, bread, milk drinks and ice cream during the evening and overnight. It is different from binge eating where a lot of food is eaten at one sitting. NES is continual eating over time.

The longer NES is suffered the more likely it is that weight gain will be an issue. There is some debate as to whether it is an eating disorder, a sleep disorder or both. Some of the other symptoms suffered can be sleep walking, other sleeping disturbances such as waking frequently or unable to get to sleep, sleep apnea and restless legs.

Anyone who suffers from night eating disorders clearly understands what I was going through. Not only was it embarrassing, it was starting to get more and more dangerous.

Millions of people go through the same routine each night, binging on foods when they least expect it, throwing them off their diet plans or gaining pounds and not understanding the root cause.

The nocturnal raiding of the refrigerator after everyone has gone to bed was one of the things that small children often looked forward to doing when becoming adults.

In the past there were commercials that addressed midnight snacking as well as more than a few sitcom episodes. It was laughed about and expected rather than what it is now-something stigmatized and labeled as a syndrome.

Causes

Midnight feasts were an institution when I was at boarding school especially around birthdays when parcels of delectable delights arrived. We gorged ourselves silly and woke the next morning with an indulgence hangover, crumbs in the bed and not feeling like breakfast.

People suffering from this disorder are not conscious during such episodes. The food consumed during the disorder periods are most likely to be high-fat, high-sugar food that people usually avoid when they’re awake. This eating disorder might happen most of the time that it would show significant gain in your weight.

Midnight binges and nocturnal sleep related eating disorder all are variations of this syndrome. Many obese night eaters reported that they believed their tendency to snack at night preceded their weight gain. People with this disorder typically wake up between one and four times each night and snack on about 300 calories worth of food.

The problem with things like late night eating is that they become a habit. Habits are by their nature difficult to overcome and get rid of.

By retraining your mind to ‘look the other way’ or ignore the habitual nature of eating at night you are leaving yourself free to do something other than giving in to your disorder and finding something to eat. Make your plans today and find the overeating help you need to overcome night eating syndrome for good.

Make a point to eat 3 good meals during the day with 1 or 2 between meal snacks. A lot of us try to eat too few calories during the day only to binge late at night. Make a point to eat most of your calories before 6 PM so that you are not tempted to snack late at night.

Take a walk, go for a stroll around the neighborhood with your spouse, or make a regular walking date with a friend. You will not only burn calories but you will be farther away from the fridge and help to stop late night eating.

Go through your kitchen and hide your junk food. Much of late night eating after dinner can be avoided by hiding the junk food. Put foods that you’re prone to eat late at night out of sight. Better yet, don’t buy junk food at all, though this may not be possible if you have kids.

Next up, you should be thinking about satiety. If you are sticking within your calorie budget for the day with your late night eating, this means you’re likely not eating as much as you should be during the day. That in itself is one big factor that could cause weight gain as it will increase the chances that you binge.

As obesity rates soar, it makes sense that we are seeing more attention focused on overeating help for those who suffer with night eating syndrome and are drawn to eat in the late hours of the night. Who knew that this would someday be behavior that is considered a disorder.

Originally published here.

The drama of Mumbai attack is now badly failed and proves to be an extreme embarrassment for the Indians. Poor Indians were completely convinced that the attacks were planned and executed through Pakistani intelligence agency the ” ISI”  and “Lashkar e Taliban” a Kashmiri Militant group allegedly having ties with Pakistan’s Army.

To get complete picture of the situation I would want the readers to read the following reports carefully because every word of these reports stands important and would act as a clear proof that Indians have got themselves trapped in an ugly situation where they cannot claim that Mumbai attack was an outside job!!

I have purposely selected the Indian source for my claims here to validate the claim I would make over here.

Report No. 1 — Important Witness

Everyone seems to know Anamika Gupta at the bustling Leopold Cafe, now an even more famous landmark of Colaba in south Mumbai  salaams from waiters, nods from the manager and even greetings from some of the regulars.

Are her repeated trips back to Leopold — where she took three bullets on November 26 last year — catharsis? She shrugs dispassionately, not agreeing nor disagreeing.

“Maut ko hum ne kareeb se dekha hain. Main zindagi guzaar rahi hoon. Kal kis ne dekha hai (I have seen death at close quarters. I am living my life. Who has seen tomorrow?)? I could have died. But I am here?! Life is bull s–t. There is finally nothing.”

Anamika’s take on life, since miraculously surviving 26/11, swings between the cheerfully brave, the dramatic and then the mildly morose. Life for her will never be the same again.

“I am a beautician. I have to be on my feet for eight hours or more. Now I can’t sit for even six hours,” she says.

She no longer works as a beautician and exists on a monthly income she receives from one of the 26/11 funds — the 26/11 Mumbai Terror Attack Survivors Support and Rehabilitation Project sponsored by the Tatas.

Her injury, a massive and angry swathe across her stomach, her doctor says, will take another six months to heal. “I used to be beautiful. I was conscious of my figure. Now, that all is over. I am a beautician (she says again) so naturally I think beauty is important. Of course, beauty is in the heart too. But your figure is also important. When I see my body in the mirror I wonder who will marry me.”

What upsets Anamika more, right now, is her recent interaction with the police. On November 5, 6 and 7, Anamika was called to the Mumbai police commissioner’s office to re-record, she says, her original statement that she gave, wounded from her bed at the J J Hospital last year.

She was called to re-record her statement after an interview she granted the local Lemon television network, which aired November 2.

Anamika feels the police do not take her evidence seriously because they think she is seeking publicity. “They are saying I am after TRPs (Television Rating Points, which indicates how popular a television program is. I am surviving myself. Does the police commissioner have a bullet? I don’t mind if they harass me, but they call up my brother, my mother and my sister-in-law and harass them.”

She says she had given the exact same evidence to the police last year and they did not take cognizance of it. She says it was conveyed to her that much of her information was not needed.

Anamika said she told them, “I saw the terrorists who attacked Leopold Cafe two days before 26/11. It was 1.30 am. I used to live in Colaba market near Dr Modi’s clinic (close to Nariman House). I saw four people leave Nariman House and get on two motorcycles and go to Delhi Darbar (a restaurant near the Regal cinema in south Mumbai). I am a chain smoker and I went out to buy cigarettes at the cigarette wallah that stays opens very late in front of Delhi Darbar. I love beautiful bikes so I noticed them. They were beauuutiful bikes. And one of the boys was very good looking, so I noticed him. And one had long hair. Kasab  (Ajmal Kasab, the lone terrorist captured after the attacks) has long hair.”

“On 26/11 I noticed them again sitting at a table in Leopold. I told my friend Sarika ‘See there is that same chikna (good looker) we saw the other day. I clicked his snap on my cell phone pretending I was taking Sarika’s picture. But my cell phone got lost. They were sitting at that table (she points to the table next to the door facing the main road) and having beer. Bullshit they did not drink!”

“I mistook them for Israelis. I thought they were some tourists roaming around because Mumbai is a nice place and it is a good season now. One of them was very handsome. The other was bald, with dirty lips and dirty, up-down teeth.”

For Anamika spotting these men earlier is not in the least surprising. Though a bit chilling. “How is it possible that just 10 people did this attack? How did they know that there was a lane to the Taj next to Leopold? And that one could enter there?”

She firmly feels it is logical that they did a survey of the area from a few days before and that was how she spotted them in and around Colaba.

Being a witness at Leopold that night did not give the 26/11 investigators sufficient reason to bring her to court. She was not called to depose in the Kasab trial. “Do you know that the police does not even know where I got injured?”

Anamika is grappling with a series of difficulties. She received her compensation of Rs 150,000 from the government promptly and is working out how she can start her own beauty salon so she can have something to do with her time.

But it is the health troubles that niggled. The bullets were all removed but she lives with a succession of splinters inside her. “I have a sinus problem. Sometimes when I cough there is blood. My wound often pains. Mentally I am not prepared.”

We are sitting just two tables away from the critical spot where Anamika was sitting at on November 26 (where she often comes back and sits for a meal). She tells you that the terrorist duo, after drinking beer in Leopold, split up after leaving the cafe. One stationed himself at the door looking out into the lane going up to the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel. The other stood at the door facing the neighborhood’s main thoroughfare, Colaba Causeway, and mercilessly fired in.

“It took a few minutes for me to realize: He is a terrorist and Bombay is having a terrorist attack.”

Shortly after that she was shot and succeeded in agonizingly dragging herself first to the police station, where she was apparently given no help, and later to the popular, Tony Indigo restaurant where she awaited an ambulance, all the while conscious.

“The manager there was trying to help. But he was also worried about protecting his restaurant and was busy turning off the lights, shutting down the restaurant and said an ambulance would come. At 11.30 (a bystander who helped the victims) Felix Ambrose came and like a baby carrying a child he picked me up and carried me to a taxi and took me to the hospital.”

“The doctor there — a Dr Gupta — was very good. It was a big miracle. Janata (the people) is beautiful in Bombay. The janata always helps!”

Vaihayasi Pande Daniel in Mumbai

Report No. 2 — Suspects outside India

How did terror suspect David Headley get a visa to India? What documents did he provide to establish his identity?

Uncovering this will be tough since it’s now official that Headley’s papers have gone missing from the Indian Consulate in Chicago which granted Headley his visa. Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao has written to the Consulate asking for an explanation.

The missing papers are the latest in a mystery that tends to get deeper and darker everyday. At the heart of India’s concerns are suspicions that Headley was originally a CIA agent who switched sides and then planned the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai with the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT).

Headley, a US national who left Pakistan with his mother as a teenager, was arrested in Chicago by the FBI in October.

NDTV has reported extensively on whether Headley started out working for the Americans. These reports have been brought up in Parliament, with CPM MP Brinda Karat asking why America is not allowing India access to Headley. In a Chicago court, US prosecutors have charged Headley with plotting the 26/11 attacks as an undercover agent of the LeT.

Headley made multiple trips to India before 26/11. He allegedly took photographs and videos of the four sites that would later come under siege by Pakistani terrorists.

Indian sources are unhappy that despite these charges, Indian officials have not been allowed to meet Headley. America has also said that it’s “too premature” to discuss Headley’s possible extradition to India after his US trial is completed.

What’s more worrying for India is that America’s surveillance of Headley began in September last year, before the 26/11 attacks. Yet, no information on him was shared with India. America clearly had specific intelligence reports about the possibility of Mumbai hotels being targeted by terrorists – the Taj was mentioned in the warning passed onto India. But Headley did not figure in this alert.

Worse, India was not told about Headley even when he visited the country in March this year, supposedly to plan a new round of terror attacks. Instead, America waited till after Headley’s arrest to share intelligence on him.

Sources say India suspects that Headley was enrolled as a spy after he was arrested for smuggling heroin in 1988. Did America then use him to infiltrate Pakistan’s narcotics underworld? And did Headley use that as a cover to start working for Pakistani terrorists against India? Questions that now have India questioning whether America has shared everything it knows about a man named Daood Gilani who morphed into David Coleman Headley

Report No. 3 — Shocking denial from Ajmal Kasab

MUMBAI: In a dramatic twist to the 26/11 terror attacks case, main accused Mohammad Ajmal Kasab on Friday retracted from his earlier statement and claimed he was forcibly made to confess.

Denying all charges against him, Kasab said the statement was made under duress.

Kasab today claimed before a special court that he was arrested on the night of November 25 and that he was falsely implicated in the 26/11 case. 

“On the night of November 25, I was roaming in Juhu. I had gone to see a movie when the local police arrested me,” Kasab told the court. 

He also told the court that he was arranging for a house in Mumbai. 

“I had a passport and I’m not the first one to come from Pakistan to Juhu area. I was arranging for a house here. The local police first arrested me and then handed me over to the crime branch,” he said.

The Pakistani gunman also said in court today he had met US-based Lashkar-e-Taiba operative David Coleman Headley in jail some time after the attacks.

The lone captured terrorist further said that on November 27, he was produced before a magistrate who then took his custody. 

“I have not given any confession before the magistrate and my statement has been falsely implicated,” Kasab added.

“I was not present at VT,” said Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, referring to Victoria Terminus, the former name of Mumbai’s main railway station where he is accused of opening fire on November 26. 

“I do not know what has happened. Witnesses have come and recognized me because my face looks similar to the terrorists,” he told the judge at the special prison court in Mumbai where he is on trial. 

Kasab claimed that “The police have killed the main accused who resembles me and they told me that his name was Abu Ali.” 

“I am his look alike. His height and face resembles mine,” Kasab said. 

“That is why I was picked up. I have been framed,” he added, speaking in Hindi. 

Kasab, who claimed that he was 20 years old, also denied that he was with Abu Ismail during the attack at CST (VT Station).

He rejected the evidence of a witness, Bharat Tamore, that he was seen with 10 terrorists at Badhwar Park when they got down from a dinghy there. 

Kasab said that “do baatein bolkar katham karna chaahtha hoon, aaj bhi mujhe bolne ka mauka nahin mila tho…” (I want to finish by saying two lines, if I don’t get a chance to speak then…)

The judge cut him short and told him that he had to answer questions the court put to him.

Kasab disagreed with Tamore’s version that he had seen the 10 terrorists at Badhwar Park wearing saffron jackets and carrying bags on their back and also a handbag.

Tamore had told the judge in his evidence that he saw two of the 10 terrorists closely and that Kasab was one of them.

Several questions were put to Kasab based on the evidences given by witnesses. 

Asked about the dinghy, Kasab said that he did not know anything about the dingy. “I saw the dingy for the first time in the court,” he said. 

The case of the prosecution is that the terrorists had reached Mumbai via the dingy.

The lone surviving terrorist captured by the police during the Mumbai attacks was scheduled to give a statement today on evidence introduced against him by the prosecution for his alleged role in the 26/11 terror attacks.

Kasab had made three confessions after his arrest. One was admission of guilt before police soon after his arrest, the other confession was made before a magistrate which is admissible as evidence and the third one was in the trial court when the accused accepted his guilt partially. 

Clearly Kasab has decided not to stick to any of these confessions when the court recorded his version today.

Summing up

Gathering the revelations of three reports rendered here, following points are extremely important to be noticed.

As Anamika stated that according to Report No. 1 above, she saw Ajmal before the Mumbai attacks. It means that if Ajmal was really the terrorist India suspects for so long, he was in Mumbai well before the attacks were carried out. Ajmal Kasab’s fresh statement which gave a serious shock to the whole Indian nation. Ajmal stated that he was in Mumbai on a valid Passport and was looking for a residence in Juhu area and was caught upon resemblance to the real terrorist also validates the claim of Anamika that she saw Ajmal well before the attacks happened. But if the second possibility is analyzed that Anamika may had seen the real terrorists few days before Mumbai attacks then the Indian claim that the assassins came from sea side  and started attacking the civilians becomes null and void. Since last few months the case of American Citizen of Pakistan origin with the name of David Coleman Headly and his Canadian friend Tahwer Hussain Rana’s alleged involvement in Mumbai attacks was greatly hyped by the Indian media. The involvement of both these persons was taken as great achievement but unfortunately for Indians the situation turned out to extremely embarrassing when on raising the question of how these people were allowed visas to visit India frequently, the Indian Consulate in California could not provide the papers filed by Headly with his application for issuance of Visa. Till now there is no clue of the papers which were believed to be strong evidence that how Indian Government provided visa to him and on what reasons. India also raises the question of involvement of CIA in sending David Coleman Headly to India and the reports have also surfaced that Coleman worked as under cover double agent for CIA and Lashkar’s operatives.

Conclusion

In the light of above shocking revelations, the whole Drama of Mumbai attacks lands with the clear notion that the real culprits and planners are definitely got connections on the Indian soil and the chain of involvement runs from Indian Consulate in Chicago to the higher authorities in India and in American CIA. The motives were clear behind those attacks which were definitely carried out to defame Pakistan, blame ISI for cross border terrorism and build a strong reason for any Military action against Pakistan. By the Grace of Allah Almighty, the drama of Mumbai attacks came back to Indians as a flop movie with embarrassing climax.

In present situation India would definitely act as an injured wolf and would try any thing worse to hurt Pakistan through Military action. Government of Pakistan and Army in particular should formulate a coordinated action in view of the present developments. It is a real success of Pakistani media, Government and our national pride The Pakistan Army that Indian conspiracy has been completely unfolded and the world has a better opportunity to understand that how far India can go to badly stab Pakistan.

It should also be noticed that India is very reluctant to accept any local involvement in the Mumbai attacks and quickly rejects any question to allow international agencies to investigate the motives behind the attacks which took many innocent lives.  There is a strong understanding that without local involvement the attacks of such a magnitude were not possible. India is very puzzled because if any international agency would jump into these investigations, the local hands particularly behind the killing of brave Chief of Anti Terrorism Squad who is believed to be the prime target of the Mumbai attacks. The strings of Mumbai attacks definitely connect to the insiders like Col Purohit who is under arrest under the charges of involvement in Malegaon blasts.  It is needed that the recent developments should be capitalized by the Pakistani Government and the media to clear the dirt thrown on the face of our country by the Indians.

I would urge the media and the nation to highlight the present developments with full force because we cannot miss this opportunity to show to the world the real bad face of India.

Article source : pakistan_hope.bravejournal.com

Originally published here.

Remember when the PS1 was released? It was a gaming miracle, and laughed in the face of its useless rivals. Only a decade on has Sony’s iron fist loosened on the gaming market. We now look at how the PS3 was created, and what affect it had on gaming.

The tale starts with the name Ken Kutaragi. Have you heard of him? He is best known as the “Father Of The Playstation”. Why? Because he was the instrumental person in the creation of the greatest gaming console in history. In the late eighties, Ken saw his daughter playing Nintendo’s NES, and after studying his daughter playing the console, and after doing his homework, he came to the conclusion that gaming had an immense potential.

Ken made a connection with Nintendo to develop the sound chip for the NES’s successor, the Super NES. The sound chip was later called The SPC700. Since this was an advanced piece of hardware, it made an impression at Sony and Nintendo. Of course, Sony wanted nothing to do with gaming, because at the time, gaming was alien compared to TV and radio.

It took Kutaragi a while to get Sony on his side. The one thing that got Sony to consider gaming, was when the SPC700 was a success, and since a Sony employee helped in it’s creation, Sony finally considered gaming. Sony created the popular format known as the compact disk, and initially, Sony and Nintendo decided to meet up and discuss a CD add-on for the SNES.
Sony executives showed heavy criticism towards this, but Ken had to rely on the sheer power of Norio Ohga, the president of Sony at that stage. They were the only two who supported the campaign, and Ohga even showed doubt during the process. Ken was eventually given permission to meddle in gaming with the grudging support of other Sony heads.

The Sony-Nintendo partnership was set to be announced at the Consumer Electronics Show 1991, but in a shocking twist, Phillips took Sony’s place, and Nintendo decided to partner with them instead. What’s even more surprising, there were a few late disagreements. Why is this surprising? If these disagreements didn’t occur, then the PS1 would have shipped able to play Super NES cartridges!

Anyway, with Nintendo dropping out, Sony had to go the gaming distance on its own, without any gaming knowledge. Sony developed the at-the-time powerful 3D graphics chip, getting ready to release the PS1, and also designing the controller. Obviously you know the legendary PS1 controller. After all the creases were ironed out, and the list was double checked, Sony was finally ready to release the mighty PS1. On the frosty winters day of the 4th of December 1994, Japan was introduced to the PS1, just in time for Christmas. For a company who developed a console with no know-how, it accurately resembles a cinderella story. 97% of the PS1’s stock was sold in the first month alone. Not much point in mentioning this, but Ken Kutaragi gained a lot of respect within Sony.

The next year, Sony released the PS1 in the United States. Sony also made sure they had a shrewd marketing technique for the PS1. They made sure they targeted at an older audience, as well as making it look like to “cool” alternative to Sega’s Saturn. Sony was only getting some American respect as it was a Japanese company, so nobody could predict what would happen when the PS1 was released. There was no need to wait until it’s release, over 100,000 PS1s were pre-ordered!

Not only did the PS1 pull gaming into the realms of 3D, it also became the most successful console of the time, with nearly every gamer having one at the time, and most gamers ready to admit they owned one these days. Gaming would have never been the same without the legendary PS1, and with the PS2 and PS3 to follow, with both expanding greatly on its predecessor, who knows what the next console will bring to the table!

Originally published here.

With around 2,000 miles of coastline, Vietnam is luckily endowed with a number of white sand and beautiful beaches. The best ones are in the southern part of the country where the sun shines almost year round. With a long, sandy coastline, and with clusters of palm fringed islands, those beaches can boast to suit any preference and for any time of year. Also several nice beaches in the north near Hanoi, but the period most suitable for swimming is limited from May to July or August due to weather conditions. The following beaches are listed north to south, starting with one of Vietnam’s most famous beaches.

China Beach
This 20 mile stretch of sand near Danang really was used by American soldiers as an “R&R” stop. The weather here is perfectly cool in the winter, but from April or May until August it can be very nice. The beach was the site of Vietnam’s first international surfing competition in 1992. Conditions for surfing are best from September to December. The beach is home to one of Vietnam’s most luxurious beach hotels, the Furama Resort. Danang, Marble Mountain, My Son and Hoi An can be explored by day-trips from China Beach.

Nha Trang
In south-central Vietnam, Nha Trang is the closest thing Vietnam has to an “international” beach resort destination. Nha Trang is Vietnam’s premier beach destination, home to two of Vietnam’s best beach resorts, one of which is on the mainland and one is on a small island nearby. The town itself is a lively port town with excellent seafood and some interesting Cham ruins nearby. It is also possible to dive or snorkel in this area and a boat trip around the islands lying off the coast is another delightful way to pass the time. The accommodation in there can meet any demand from standard hostels to the most luxurious resorts in Vietnam. Nha Trang can be easily reached by air from Saigon, Hanoi and other cities.

Hoi An
Hoi An town is also known for its fine white sand beach, around three kilometers from the main town. This is a great option for those who wish to combine interesting touring with time spent relaxing on the beach.

Phan thiet
In Southern Vietnam, Phan Thiet district is home to the peaceful fishing village of Mui Ne, whose endless stretch of white beach now offers a range of resorts. It has also long been considered the “Hawaii” of Vietnam. It boasts shady roads under coconut trees, a beautiful beach and cliffs battered by the waves of the sea. The typical scenery of Mui Ne lies in the moving lines of golden sand caused by the wind and when they are seen from afar they look like moving waves. The scenery looks more fascinating at dawn, when young Cham girls in green dresses go to work. Mui Ne is an ideal place for rest and relaxation.
Thanks to its proximity to Saigon, Mui Ne is popular with tourists and locals alike and its location means that it is the perfect way to end a Vietnam trip. Mui Ne has become popular for kite surfing and the nearby sand dunes are more reminiscent of Africa than Vietnam. Visitors also can enjoy swimming in the blue water of the sea, climbing the sand dunes or relaxing by a swimming pool. Phan Thiet can be reached by road from Hochiminh city

Vung Tau
The beach at Vung Tau isn’t especially great, but its proximity to Ho Chi Minh City insures a steady patronage from locals as well as tourists. Vung Tau is about 80 miles from Ho Chi Minh City. This destination can be reached by road or hydrofoil from this busiest city of Vietnam.

Phu Quoc Island
Phu Quoc Island is situated off the South coast of Vietnam, close to Cambodia. This small and unspoiled island is only a short flight from Saigon and remains a quiet and laid back destination, perfect for those wishing to escape the crowds. According to many, the beaches of Phu Quoc Island are the best in Vietnam. The island is still quite primitive and untouched. However some hotels and resorts are operated and well respond to the wide range of tourist’s demand rising. The island can be reached by air or by ferry from Rach Gia on the mainland.

For more details, contact to info@vietnamholidaynow.com or see more our collection of beach vacations at http://vietnamholidaynow.com/english/vietnam/tour/Beach-vacation/239.html

Originally published here.

JINNAH — “The Festival of Sacrifice If we show the same spirit of sacrifice as was shown by Ibrahim, God would rend the clouds and shower on us His blessing as He did on Ibrahim… The greater the sacrifices are made the purer and more chastened shall we emerge like gold from fire… So my message to you all is of hope, courage and confidence.”      

JK GALBRAITH –”In economics, the majority is always wrong.”   

JMES PUCKLE- “An honest man is a citizen of the world.”

JNANA VASISHTA –”Between two thoughts there is an interval of no thought. That interval is the Self, the Atman. It is pure Awareness only.”    

JNANESHWAR – “Various articles of clothing are made from the same cotton cloth; likewise, the varied forms of the universe are creatively fashioned of the one Consciousness, which remains forever pure.”   

JO ANN CAYEE –”Just to be alive and to be of service to somebody is a reward.”   

JOAN BAEZ –’If it’s natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?”

JOAN BAEZ –”As long as one keeps searching, the answers come.”    

JOAN BAEZ –”Don’t tell me of love everlasting and other sad dreams, I don’t want to hear. Just tell me of passionate strangers who rescue each other from a lifetime of cares.”

JOAN BAEZ- “The only thing that’s been a worse flop than the oranisation of non-violence has been the organisation of violence.”

JOAN BORYSENKO- “The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live.”

JOAN CRASTO -”The Lord has risen indeed/ from bondage to set us free, / So that we now share in His victory/ and now life is eternal for thee. The Lord has risen indeed, / He has risen and lives to die no more, / to plead the cause of the sinner, / whose curse and shame He bore. The Lord has risen indeed/ all our debts He paid/ even though the weight of the Father’s anger, / On His tender heart was laid. The Lord has risen indeed/ His mighty work performed, / Sin and death are conquered, / By the Sinless Deathless One. The Lord has risen indeed, / God has completed His sacrifice,/”It is finished”—hear Him cry,/Learn from Jesus Christ,to die.”

JOAN OF ARC –”I am am not afraid … I was born to do this.”  

JOAN OSBORNE  –”What if God was one of us…/ Just a stranger on the bus/ Trying to make his way home…/ Like a holy rolling stone/ Back up to heaven all alone/ Nobody calling on the phone/ Except for the Pope maybe in Rome.”        

JOAN RIVERS –”If God had wanted me to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor.”   

JOANNA BAILLIE –”The every air thick and heavily, where murder has bee done.”

JOANNE HARRIS –”We can’t go around measuring our goodness by what we don’t do and who we exclude.”   

JOANNE WOODWARD –”Sexiness wears thin after a while and beauty fades, but to be married to a an who makes you laugh every day now and that’s a real treat.”

JOAQUIN ANDUJAR –”You can’t worry if it’s cold; you can’t worry if it’s hot; you only worry if you get sick.”   

JOCJ FALKSON –”When we are 20, we worry about what others think of us. At 40 we don’t care what they think of us. At 60 we discover they haven’t been thinking about us at all.”

JOE DIMAGGIO –”A person always doing his or her best becomeas a natural leader, just by example.”        

JOE E. LEWIS –”You only live once — but if you work it right, once is enough.”

JOE HILL –”Work and pray, live on hay/ You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.”        

JOE NAMATH –”Football is an honest game. It’s true to life. It’s a game about sharing. Football is a team game. So is life.”     

JOE ORTON -”Reading isn’t an occupation we encourage among police officers. We try to keep the paper work down to a minimum.”    

JOE PATEMO –”Success without honour is an unseasoned dish. It will satisfy your hunger, but it won’t taste good.”

JOE PATERNO –”Losing a game is heartbreaking. Losing your sense of excellence or worth is a tragedy.”        

JOE PATERNO –”When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality.”   

JOEL BENTON –”Pixie, kobold, elf, and sprite, All are on their rounds tonight; in the wan moon’s silver ray, Thrives their helter-skelter play.”

JOEL MORWOOD –”In order to attain gnosis, it is not enough merely to experience a state of formlessness. You have to “discern” or “awaken to”, or “realise” its significance — that this formlessness is the ultimate nature of everything, including form. This is what gnosis is all about. Patanjali calls it asamprajnata samadhi — “Samadhi without support” — because it doesn’t depend, on any particular state.”       

JOEY ADAMS –”May all your troubles last as long as your new year’s resolutions.”

JOEY LAUREN –”Never let a fool kiss you, or a kiss fool you.” 

JOHA GRAY –”When man and woman are able to respect and accept their differences then love has a chance to blossom.”

JOHANN VON SCHILLER –”Keep true to the dreams of thy youth.”  

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE- “As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE –”Nature is the living, visible garment of God.”

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE –”Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.”         

JOHN –”For God so loved the world that He gave His only son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”  

JOHN –”Greater love has no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

JOHN –”Jesus saidi “I am the resurrection, and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?”          

JOHN –”The wind blows where it will, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”   

JOHN- “The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit.”

JOHN A SHEDD –”A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”

JOHN A SIMONE –”If you’re in a bad situation, don’t worry, it will change. If you are in a good situation don’t worry, it will change.”    

JOHN A. HOLMES –”There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.”  

JOHN A.SHEDD- “A ship in harbor is safe but that is not what ship are build for.”

JOHN ADAMS –”I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, tapestry, and porcelain.” 

JOHN ADAMS –”Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.”   

JOHN ADAMS –”That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of the history of the whole world.”    

JOHN ADAMS –”The people have a right, an indisputable, unalienable indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge — I mean of the character and conduct of their rulers.”

JOHN ALIEN PAUIOS –”Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.”     

JOHN ALLSTON –”The only thing you take with you when you’re gone is what you leave behind.”     

JOHN AMATT –”Without adversity, without change, life is boring. The paradox of comfort is that we stop trying.”

JOHN ARGENT –”A plan is a list of actions arranged in whatever sequence is thought likely to achieve an objective.”

JOHN AUGUSTINE –”It’s easy to make children, but it’s not so easy to feed them, you know, with those things of the heart.”   

JOHN B URROUGHS –”One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: To rise above little things’.”

JOHN BARRYMORE –”A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.”    

JOHN BARRYMORE –”Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn’t know you left open.”   

JOHN BAY –”Noble souls, through dust and heat, rise from disaster and defeat the stronger.”   

JOHN BERRY –”The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp.”    

JOHN BRADSHAW –”Children are natural Zen masters; their world is brand new in each and every moment.”       

JOHN BUCHAN- “An atheist is a man who was no invisible means to support.”

JOHN BUNYAN –”So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.”  

JOHN BURROUGH –”How beautifully the leaves grow old? How full of light and color are their last days?”   

JOHN BURROUGHS –”A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”

JOHN BURROUGHS –”Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth. To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter… to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring — these are some of the rewards of the simple life. The most precious things of life are near at hand, without money and without price. Each of you has the whole wealth of the universe at your very door. All that I ever had, and still have, may be yours by stretching forth your hand and taking it.”    

JOHN BURROUGHS –”One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: ‘To rise above little things.’”  

JOHN BURROUGHS –”Style transforms common quartz into an Egyptian pebble. We are apt to think of style as something external, that can be put on, something in and of itself. But it is not; it is in the inmost texture of the substance itself. Polish, choice words, faultless rhetoric, are only the accidents of style. Indeed, perfect workmanship is one thing; style, as the great writers have it, is quite another. It may, and often does, go with faulty workmanship. It is the choice of words in a fresh and vital way, so as to give us a vivid sense of a new spiritual force and personality In the best work the style is found and hidden in the matter.”    

JOHN BURROUGHS –”The difference between a precious stone and a common stone is not an essential difference — not a difference of substance — but of arrangement of the particles — the crystallisation. In substance, the charcoal and the diamond are one, but in form and effect, how widely they differ! The pearl contains nothing that is not found in the coarsest oyster-shell. Two men have the same thoughts; they use about the same words in expressing them; yet with one the product is real literature, with the other it is platitude. The difference is all in presentation; a finer and more compendious process has gone on in the one ease than in the other. The elements are better fused and knitted together; they are in some way heightened and intensified. Is not here a clue to what we mean by style? 

JOHN BURROUGHS –”The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.”   

JOHN BURROUGHS –”To learn something new; take the path you took yesterday.”         

JOHN CAGE –”I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”  

JOHN CARLISLE –”Help us to harness the wind, the water, thesun, and all the ready and renewable sources of power. Teach us to conserve, preserve, use wisely the blessed treasures of our wealth-stored earth. Help us to share your bounty, not waste it, or pervert it into peril for our children or our neighbours in other nations. You, who are life arid energy and blessing, teach us to revere and respect your tender world. Prayer of Thomas”                

JOHN CELES –”Today’s the ‘Festival of Lights’all o’er; A joyful day for minds and hearts and souls; And people throng the Temples to offer, Prayers, resolving to take better roles. And most of them are richly clad and clean, And eat such dainty foods and sweets with mirth; Whilst noisy crackers burst, their lights are seen, It seems to be a happy day on Earth! But are there not hearts woe-filled, very sad? Denied of laughter, smiles for days; Today’s the triumph of Good over bad; But what about the wastage in much ways? True joy is when you see someone else smile! True charity gives joy in Heav’nly style.”    

JOHN CHURTON COLLIS –”In prosperity, your friends know us; in adversity we know our friends.”

JOHN CLEESE –”I used to desire many many things, but now I have just one desire, and that’s to get rid of all my other desires.”

JOHN CLEESE –”If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And if I can persuade you to laugh at the particular point I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge its truth.”   

JOHN CNURTON COLLINS –”In prosperity our friends know us in adversity we know our friends.”    

JOHN D BARROW –”There was no “before” the beginning of our universe, because once upon a time there was no time.”

JOHN D ROCKEFELLER –”Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.”  

JOHN D ROCKEFELLER –”Thrift is essential to well-ordered living.”    

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER –”I had no ambition to make a fortune. Mere money-making has never been my goal. I bad an ambition to build.”   

JOHN DENNISON –”Spiritual justice is the right of every soul to set its own course through life, and the responsibility to allow others to do the same. Allowing everything to be as it is created. And to accept responsibility for our role in it all— through our perceptions, our choices, and the conditions within that shape our lives (whether within our conscious awareness or not).”     

JOHN DOBBIN –”In the time honoured  tradition of email, just ignore the question.”    

JOHN DONNE –”All ankind is of one Author, and is one volume; when one Man dies, one Chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employees several translators; some pieces are translated by age; some by sickness, some by warre, some by justice, but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall binde up all our scattered leaves again, for that libraries where every book shall lie open to one another. No man is an island in tire of itself, every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the Maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is less, as well as if a promontories were, as well as if a manner of thy friends or of thin own were any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

JOHN DONNE –”Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”   

JOHN DONNE –”Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.”      

JOHN DONNE –”No man is an island, entire of itself/ Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main/ If a clod be washed away by the sea.”

JOHN DONNE –”One short sleep past, we walk eternally, and death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.”

JOHN DRINKWATER- “When you defile the pleasant stream, you massacre a million dream.”

JOHN DRYDEN- “Forgiveness to the injured doth belong. But they ne’er pardon who have done the wrong.”

JOHN DRYDEN –”To die is landing on some distant shore.”

JOHN E. SOUTHARD –”The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you.”

JOHN F KENNEDY – “Forgive your enemies but never forget their manes.”

JOHN F KENNEDY – “Forgive your enemies but never forget their manes.”

JOHN F KENNEDY – “I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy: “Dear Jack, Don’t buy a single vote more than necessary. I’ll be dammed if I’m going to pay for a landslide”.”

JOHN F KENNEDY – “Let us never negotiate out of fear to negotiate.”

JOHN F KENNEDY – “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

JOHN F KENNEDY – “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

JOHN F KENNEDY –”A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.”

JOHN F KENNEDY –”A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.”

JOHN F KENNEDY –”A nation can’t afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.”    

JOHN F KENNEDY –”All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talents.”  

JOHN F KENNEDY –”As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”   

JOHN F KENNEDY –”Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.”  

JOHN F KENNEDY –”Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”

JOHN F KENNEDY –”If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”    

JOHN F KENNEDY –”If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.”          

JOHN F KENNEDY –”In the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding on the back of the tiger ended up inside.” 

JOHN F KENNEDY –”It is our task in our time and in our generation, to hand down undiminished to those who come after us, as was handed down to us by those who went before, the natural wealth and beauty which is ours.” 

JOHN F KENNEDY –”Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.”

JOHN F KENNEDY –”Let us resolve to be masters, not the victims, of our history, controlling our own destiny without giving way to blind suspicions and emotions.”

JOHN F KENNEDY –”One person can make a difference and every person should try.”   

JOHN F KENNEDY –”Our fears must never hold us back from pursuing our hopes.”  

JOHN F KENNEDY –”Peace is a daily a weekly a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.”   

JOHN F KENNEDY –”The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy .”      

JOHN F KENNEDY –”The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.”       

JOHN F KENNEDY –”The people of the world respect a nation that can see beyond its own image.”

JOHN F KENNEDY –”The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”      

JOHN F KENNEDY –”There are risks and cost to a program of action — but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”  

JOHN F KENNEDY –”We are coming to understand that the arts incarnate the creativity of a free people.”        

JOHN F KENNEDY –”We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world- or to make it the last.”  

JOHN F KENNEDY -”Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed—and no republic can survive.”   

JOHN FLETCHER –”Now the lusty spring is seen; Golden, yellow, gaudy blue, Daintily invite the view.”

JOHN FOWLES –”Men see objects, women see the relationship between objects. Whether the objects need each other, love each other, match each other. It is an extra dimension of feeling we men are without and one that makes war abhorrent to all real women — and absurd.”  

JOHN GAY –”Alas! You know the cause too well; The salt is spilt, to me it fell; Then to contribute to my loss, My knife and fork were laid across; On Friday, too! The day I dread! Would I were safe at home in bed! Last night (I vow to Heaven ’tis true) Bounce from the fire a coffin flew. Next post some fatal news shall tell; God send my Cornish friends be well!”

JOHN GAY –”We only part to meet again. Change, as ye list, ye winds; my heart shall be the faithful compass that still points to thee.”

JOHN GIELGUD –”You make a new life for yourself when you are old.”    

JOHN GILLESPIE MAGEE, JR –”High Flight Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth/ Of sun-split I clouds, — and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence hovering there, I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung my eager craft through I footless halls of air… Up, up the long, delirious burning blue I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace where never lark, or ever eagle flew—And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”

JOHN GLENN –”I don’t know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets.”       

JOHN GRAY — “Just as women are afraid of receiving, men are afraid of giving.”

JOHN GUNTHER –”All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.”         

JOHN HARRIGAN –”People need loving the most when they deserve it the least.”

JOHN HAY –”I think that saving a little child And bringing him to his own, Is a darned sight better business Than loafing around the throne.”   

JOHN HEISMAN –”Gentlemen, it is better to have died a small boy than to jumble this football.”   

JOHN HOLT- “No use to shout at them to pay attention. If the situations, the materials, the problems before the child do not interest him, his attention will slip off to what does interest him, and no amount of exhortation of threats will bring it back.”

JOHN HUSTON –”Hollywood has always been a cage… a cage to catch our dreams.”     

JOHN ILHAN –”Don’t let anyone say you can’t do it.”   

JOHN IRVING –”It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious. Prostitutes know this too.”        

JOHN J INGALLS –”The golden rule has no place in a political campaigns”    

JOHN K BANGS –”Bring forth the raisins and the nuts — Tonight All-Hallows’ Spectre struts along the moonlit way.”      

JOHN K GALBRAITH –”Once the visitor was told rather repetitively that New York was the melting pot… This self-congratulation is now less often heard, since it was discovered some years ago that racial harmony depended unduly on the willingness of the blacks (and latterly the Puerto Ricans) to do for the other races the meanest jobs at the lowest wages and then to return to live by themselves in the worst slums.”   

JOHN KBANGS –”What fools indeed we morals are to lavish care upon a Car, with ne’er a bit of time to see about our own machinery!”      

JOHN KEATS- “Real are the dreams of Goad, and smoothly pass their pleasures in a long immortal dream.”

JOHN KEBLE –”We scatter seeds with careless hand, And dream we ne’er shall see them more; But for a thousand years Their fruit appears, In weeds that mar the land, Or healthful shore.”    

JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH –”In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.”     

JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH –”The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable”          

JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH –”There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.”

JOHN KERRY –”Today we have an energy policy of big oil, by big oil and’ for big oil. With common sense investment in advancing and speeding break- throughs, we can harness the natural world around us to light and power the world we live in with secure forms of energy at reasonable costs for a modern economy.”

JOHN L FLYNN –”In a metaphorical sense, the hero’s journey is also a journey of enlightenment, in which the individual breaks through the boundaries of self to discover his unique contribution to the world…. In modern society, where most old myths have lost their power, the cultural imperative to invent new stories and create new heroes has given rise to the sub-genre of fantastic literature known as ‘heroic fantasy’.”    

JOHN L GRAHAM- “The correct strategy for Americans negotiating with foreign clients is to ask questions…if an impasse is reached, doesn’t pressure. Suggest a recess or another meeting.”

JOHN L GRAHAM- “The correct strategy for Americans negotiating with foreign clients is to ask questions…if an impasse is reached, doesn’t pressure. Suggest a recess or another meeting.”

JOHN LANE –”The industrialist was horrified to find the fisherman lying beside his boat, smoking his pipe. “Why aren’t you fishing?” asked the industrialist. “Because I have caught enough fish for the day” “Why don’t you catch some more?” “What would I do with them?” “Earn more money. Then you could have a motor fixed to your boat and go into deeper waters and catch more fish. That would bring you money to buy nylon nets, so more fish, more money. Soon you would have enough to buy two boats even a fleet of boats. Then you could be rich like me.” “What would I do then?” “Then you could sit back and enjoy life.” “What do you think I’m doing now?” 

John le carre- “A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.”

JOHN LENNON –”Christ, you know it ain’t easy/ you know how hard it can be. The way things are goiung/ they gonna crucify me.”   

JOHN LENNON- “For I don’t care too much for money. For money can’t by me love.”

JOHN LENNON –”I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?”   

JOHN LENNON- “Imagine there’s no country. It isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for.”

JOHN LENNON –”Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”    

JOHN LENNON –”Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.”

JOHN LENNON –”She’s the kind of a girl that makes the News of the World. Yes, you could say she was attractively built.”    

JOHN LENONE –”Life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans.”

JOHN LOCKE –”The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property.”       

JOHN LOCKE –”Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.”     

JOHN LUBBOCK –”Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colours flowers, so does art colours life.”   

JOHN LUBBOCK –”Our duty is to believe that for which we have sufficient evidence, and to suspend our judgment when we have not.” 

JOHN LUBBOCK –”What we see depends mainly on what we look for.”   

JOHN LYDON – “Stop your cheap comments/ ‘Cos we know what we feel.”

JOHN LYDON – “When there’s no future/ How can there be sin?/We’re the flowers in the dustbin.”

JOHN LYDON –”There’s nothing glorious in dying. Anyone can do it.”

JOHN MACY- “Any essential reforms must, like charity, begin at home.”

JOHN MANLEY –”If we weren’t committed to our best friend and ally, just what would we be committed to?”        

JOHN MARM BROWN –”Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.”    

JOHN MASEFIELD –”I hold that when a person dies/ His soul returns again to earth;/ Arrayed in some new flesh-disguise./ Another mother gives him birth./ With sturdier limbs and brighter brain/ The old soul takes the roads again.”

JOHN MASON –”WE WERE BORN AN ORIGINAL. DON’T DIE A COPY.”

JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES- “Apart from instability due to speculation, there is the instability a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical expectations.”

JOHN Mc CORMIC –”It is infinitely easier to criticize then to create.”

JOHN MCGRAW –”Sportsmanship and easygoing methods are all right, but it is the prospect of a hot fight that brings out the crowds.”

JOHN MILTON –”A crown, golden in show is but a wreath of thorns.”

JOHN MILTON –”And grace that won who saw to wish her stay.”  

JOHN MILTON- “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”

JOHN MILTON –”He that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.”   

JOHN MILTON –”He who reigns within himself, and rules passions, desires, and fears, is more than a king.”

JOHN MILTON –”Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.”   

JOHN MILTON –”Nations grown corrupt Love bondage more than liberty; Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty.” 

JOHN MILTON –”The melting voice through mazes running; Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony.”          

JOHN MORLEY –”Nature, in her most dazzling aspects or stupendous parts, is but the background and theatre of the tragedy of man.”      

JOHN MORLEY –”Those who would treat politics and morality apart will never understand the one or the other.”

JOHN MUIR –”Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”    

JOHN MUIR –”I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!”    

JOHN MUIR –”The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilder ness… God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.”   

JOHN MUIR –”Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilised people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home; that wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.”   

JOHN MUIR –”When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”  

JOHN N MITCHEU –”Our attitude toward life determines life’s attitude towards us.”    

JOHN N WILFORD –”Alone among all creatures, the species that styles itself wise, Homo sapiens, has an abiding interest in its distant origins, knows that its allotted time is short, worries about the future and wonders about the past.”  

JOHN NAISBITT –”Everything never changes but something is definitely changing.”   

JOHN NASH –”It’s almost as if a demon might have parsed from one host to another.”  

JOHN OF DAMASCUS –”Water is also one of the four elements, the most beautiful of God’s creations. It is both wet and cold, heavy, and with a f tendency to descend, and flows with great readiness. It is this the Holy Scripture has in view when it says, “And the darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Water, then, is the most beautiful element and rich in usefulness, and purifies from all filth, and not only from the filth of the body but from that of the soul, if it should have received the grace of the Spirit.”

John osborne- “They spend their time mostly looking forward to the past.”

JOHN PATRICK- “Pain makes man think, thought makes man wise, wisdom makes life endurable.”

JOHN POWELL –”If my ship sails from sight, it doesn’t mean my journey ends, it simply means the river bends.”  

JOHN POWELL –”The only love worthy of a name is unconditional.” 

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS –”If your actions inspire others to dream more, (earn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”     

JOHN RANDOLPH PRICE –”Truth must be realized individually. It must be realized by you, otherwise it is not your Truth. How do you find your truth? By seeking and finding the teacher within. You see, the Teacher and the Truth within are one.”  

JOHN RUSKIN –”I believe the first test of a truly great man is humility.” 

JOHN RUSKIN –”In order that people may be happy in their work. These three things are needed: They must be fit for it: They must not do too much of it: And they must have a  sense of success in it.”       

JOHN RUSKIN –”Jnere is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.”  

JOHN RUSKIN –”Nothing is ever done beautifully which is done in rival ship; or nobly, which is done in pride.”        

JOHN RUSKIN –”Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of intelligent effort.”   

JOHN RUSKIN –”Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.”  

JOHN RUSKIN –”The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.”    

JOHN RUSKIN –”The most beautiful things in the world are the most Useless, for instance peacocks and lilies.”      

JOHN RUSKIN –”The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.”   

JOHN RUSKIN –”When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.”

JOHN RUSKIN –”You may either win your peace or buy it, by resistance to evil but it, by compromise with evil.” 

JOHN RUSKIN- “You may either win your peace or buy it; win it, by resistance to evil, buy it, by compromise with evil.”

JOHN S. COLEMAN –”The point to remember is that what the government gives it must first take away.”

JOHN SCHINDLER –”Life can be one satisfaction after another if we let it.”

JOHN SHEFFIELD –”Passion makes the world go round. Love just makes it a safer place.”

JOHN SLOAN –”I always think of shade as being full of light. That is why I like to use the word shade rather than light and shadow Shade seems to play over the thing, envelop it, better define it, while shadow seems to fall on the thing and stain the surface with darks.”     

JOHN SMITH –”Reason in a good man sits in the throne, and governs all the powers of his soul in a sweet harmony and  agreement with itself: whereas wicked men live only being led up and down by the foolish fires of their own sensual apprehensions. In wicked men there is a democracy of wild lusts and passions, which violently hurry the soul up and down with restless motions.”

JOHN SMITH –”The true metaphysical and contemplative man, who running and shooting up above his own logical or self-rational life, pierceth into the highest life: such a one, who by universal love and holy affection abstracting himself from himself, endeavours the nearest union with the divine essence that may be.”

JOHN STEINBECK –”A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean question: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well or ill?”   

JOHN STEINBECK –”How will our children know who they are if I they don’t know where they came from?”      

JOHN STEINBECK –”It is the nature of a man as he grows older to protect against change, particularly change for the better.”

JOHN STEINBECK –”When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job.”

JOHN STUART HILL –”One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests.”   

JOHN UPDIKA –”Dreams come true. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.”

JOHN UPDIKE –”Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth, without rain, there would be no life.”    

JOHN W GARDNER –”Excellence is doings ordinary things extraordinarily well.” 

JOHN W GARDNER –”Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.”   

JOHN W GARDNER –”The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”   

JOHN WAYNE –”If everything isn’t black and white, I say, “Why the hell not?”   

JOHN WAYNE –”Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.”

JOHN WEBSTER –”Is a not old wine wholesomest, old pippin toothsome, old wood burns brightest, old lines washes whitest and old lovers are soundest?”  

JOHN WEBSTER- “The weakest arm is strong enough that strikes with sword of justice.” 

JOHN WESLEY –”Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.”

JOHN WESLEY –”Cleanliness is no part of religion… Certainly this is a duty.. Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness.”       

JOHN WESLEY –”Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can.”  

JOHN WESLEY –”EARN ALL THAT YOU CAN, SAVE ALL THAT YOU CAN, AND GIVE ALL THAT YOU CAN.”

JOHN WHITTIER –”Somehow, not only for Christmas/ But all the long year through, / the joy that you give to others/ is the joy that comes back to you. / And the more you spend in blessing/ the poor and lonely and sad, / the more of your heart’s possessing/ Returns to you glad.” 

JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER –”Time, to the nation as to the individuals, is nothing absolute its duration depends on the rate of thought and feeling.” 

JOHN WILMOT –”Since ’tis Nature’s law to change, constancy alone is strange.” 

JOHN WOODEN – “Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”

JOHN WOODEN –”Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.”

JOHN WOODEN –”Be more concerned with your character than your reputation. Your character is what you are; your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

JOHN WOODEN –”It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”   

JOHN WOODEN –”Never let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”  

JOHN WOODEN –”Webster partially defines faith as an unquestioning belief in God with complete trust, confidence and reliance. Faith is not just waiting, hoping and wanting things to happen. Rather it is working hard to make things happen and realizing that there are no failures—just disappointments — when you have done your best. As someone once said: If you do your best, angels can do no better.” 

JOHN WOODY –”Many of life’s failures are people who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up.”   

JOHN ZIMMERMAN –”Put this restriction on your pleasures, be cautious that they injure no being that lives.”        

JOHNKEBLE –”We scatter seeds with careless hand,/ And dream we ne’er shall see them more;/ But for a thousand years/ Their fruit appears,/ In weeds that mar the land,/ Or healthful shore.”  

JOHNL SPALDING –”Your faith is what you believe, not what you know.”

JOHNNY BORRELL –”My message to the G8 leaders is that this is their chance to make a lot of difference in the world and to come back fulfilling their promises rather than coming back; with empty promises.”

JOHNNY CARSON –”If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.”

JOHNNY CASH –”Well, you wonder why I always dress in black, Why you never see bright colours on my back, And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone. Well, there’s a reason for the things that I have on. I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, Living in the hopeless, hungry side of town… Well, we’re doing mighty fine, I do suppose, In our streak of light in’ cars and fancy clothes, But just so we’re reminded of the ones who are held back, Up front there ought ‘a be a Man In Black… Well, there’s things that never will be right I know, and things need change in everywhere you go, But ’til we start to make a move to make a few things right; you’ll never see me wear a suit of white. Ah, I’d love to wear a rainbow every day, and tell the world that everything’s OK, But I’ll try to carry off a little darkness on my back, “Till things are brighter, I’m the Man In Black.”   

JOHNNY DEPP –”The only gossip I’m interested in is things from the Weekly World News: Woman’s bra bursts, 11 injured’. That kind of thing.”    

JOHNNY DEPP –”There are four questions of value in life… What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love.”         

JOHNNY ROTTEN –”I’m not here for your amusement. You’re here for mine.”      

JON WYNNE-TYSON –”The wrong set of people are always in power because they would not be in power if they were not the wrong sort of people.”          

JONAS SALK –”Life is magic, the way nature works seems to be quite magical.”

JONATHAN CARROL –”You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love, the running across fields into your lover’s arms can only come later when you’re sure the won’t laugh if you trip.”

JONATHAN EDWARDS –”Grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected.”  

JONATHAN EDWARDS –”Resolved, never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.”

JONATHAN KOZOL –”Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.”  

JONATHAN LARSON RENT- “The opposite of war is not peace, it’s creation.”

JONATHAN RABAN –”Life, as the most ancient of all metaphors insists, is a journey; and the travel book, in its deceptive simulation of the journey’s fits and starts, rehearses life’s own fragmentation.”   

JONATHAN SWIFT –”Blessed are those who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed.”   

JONATHAN SWIFT –”I shall be like that tree, I shall die at the top.”    

JONATHAN SWIFT- “May you live all the days of your life.”

JONATHAN SWIFT –”Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.”

JONATHAN SWIFT –”Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.”   

JONATHAN SWIFT –”Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”

JONATHAN SWIFT- “We are so fond of one another, because our aliments are the same.”

JONATHON WINTERS- “I could not wait for success, so I went ahead without it.”

JORDAN –”I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”

JORGE LUIS BORGES- “Nothing’s built on stone. All is built on sand, but we must built as if the sand were stone.”

JORGE LUIS BORGES –”Through the years, a man peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, tools, stars, horses and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his own face.”    

JORGE LUIS BORGES –”Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.”

JOSAF STALIN- “There is a man, there is a problem. No man, no problem.”

JOSAPH CONRAD- “World, as is well-known, are the great foes of reality.”

JOSE –”I was watching TV when the Challenger shuttle exploded. That was a sad thing. Was there anything that you could have done? Were you mad because they came too close to your territory? We’re sorry.”

JOSE GARCIA OLIVER –”Justice … is so subtle a thing that to interpret it one has only need of a heart.”

JOSE ORTEGA Y GASSET –”An unemployed existence is a worse negation of life than death itself. Because to live means to have something definite to do — a mission to fulfill — and in the measure in which we avoid setting our life to something, we make it empty.. Human life, by its very nature, has to be dedicated to something.” 

JOSE ORTEGA Y GASSET –”Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.”  

JOSE ORTEGA Y GASSET –”Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we ham been, but what we yearn to be.”   

JOSE ORTEGA Y GASSET –”We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands on himself, and the latter who makes no demands on himself.”

JOSE ORTEGAY GASSET –”The ultimate reality of the world is neither matter nor spirit, but a perspective. God is perspective and hierarchy perspective is perfected by the multiplication of its viewpoints and the precision with which we react to each one of its planes.”

JOSEF PILSUDSKI –”To be vanquished and yet not surrender, that is victory.”  

JOSEF STALIN — “Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.”

JOSEPH ADDISON- “Justice discards party, friendship, kindred and is therefore always represented as blind.”

JOSEPH ADDISON –”The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life… Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality.”

JOSEPH ADDISON –”Tis not in mortals to command success, But we’ll do more, Sempronius; we’ll deserve it.”

JOSEPH ADDISON –”We are growing serious, and let them tell you, that’s the very next step to being dull.”          

JOSEPH ADDISON –”When you’re looking for a friend don’t look for perfection, just look for friendship.”

JOSEPH BARTH –”Marriage is our last, best chance to grow up.”       

JOSEPH BRODSKY –”Life — the way it really is—is a battle not between bad and good but between bad and worse.”      

JOSEPH BRODSKY –”No matter under what circumstances you leave it, home does not cease to be home. No matter how you lived there — well or poorly.”       

JOSEPH BRODSKY –”What should I say about life? That it’s long and abhors transparence.”

JOSEPH BRODSKY –”Winter is an abstract season; it is low on colours…and big on the imperatives of cold and brief daylight…”

JOSEPH CAMPBELL –”All you can learn is what your life is and try to stay loyal to that.”           

JOSEPH CAMPBELL –”At such moments, you realise that you and the other are, in fact, one. It’s a big realisation. Survival is the second law of life. The first is that we are all one.”

JOSEPH CAMPBELL –”Man typically celebrates tales of heroes and their deeds to understand his own place in the universe.”

JOSEPH CAMPBELL –”The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”  

JOSEPH CAMPBELL –”The goal of the myth is to…affect) a reconciliation of the individual consciousness with the Universal will.”

JOSEPH CAMPBELL –”We must be willing to get rid-of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”   

JOSEPH CAMPBELL –”Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.”       

JOSEPH CHILTON PEARCE –”To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”   

JOSEPH CONRAD –”Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.”  

JOSEPH CONRAD –”For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed for it, for all the celebrations it has been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.”        

JOSEPH CONRAD –”The belief in a super- natural source of evil is hot necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”

JOSEPH CONRAD, LORD JIM –”There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.”     

JOSEPH CONROD –”The terrorist and policemen came from the same basket.”

JOSEPH DISPENZA –”Once we begin to see travel as an inner journey, it is possible to turn every trip we take into a spiritual practice, a hero’s adventure that enlivens our hearts and enlarges our souls. Travel becomes a spiritual experience for us when we are conscious at every moment that our physical transportation from place to place has a metaphysical counterpart. Understanding that, the road takes us inexorably to an encounter with the stranger at the heart of the journey — the transformed self.”    

JOSEPH HELLER- “Frankly I’d like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry.”

JOSEPH HELLER –”The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on.”        

JOSEPH HELLER –”When I grow up I want to be a little boy.” 

JOSEPH JOUBERT –”It is easy to understand God as long as you don’t try to explain him.”        

JOSEPH KRUTCH –”Technology made large populations possible; large populations now make technology indispensable.”

JOSEPH ROUX –”Evil often triumphs, but never conquers.”   

JOSEPH ROUX –”Literate was formerly an art and finance a trade; today it is the reverse.”    

JOSEPH ROUX –”There is a slowness in affairs which ripens them, and a slowness which rots them.”

JOSEPH SEAMON COTTER –”On the dusty earth-drum Beats the falling rain; Now a whispered murmur, Now a louder strain. Slender, silvery drumsticks, On an ancient drum, Beat the mellow music Bidding life to come.”   

JOSEPH STALAIN — “Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.”

JOSEPH STALAIN –”A single death is tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”

JOSEPH STALAIN -”Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”    

JOSEPH STALAIN –”If the opposition disarms, ‘well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves.”      

JOSEPH WECHSBERG –”We should learn from children not to hold grudges. Children often fight when they play together but they quickly make up and their fights don’t deteriorate into bitter feuds.”    

JOSH BILLING –”Every man knows his follies and often they are the most interesting things he has got.”  

JOSH BILLINGS –”A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than you love yourself.”

JOSH BILLINGS –”Half the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.”

JOSH BILLINGS –”Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you has crossed the mountain.”

JOSH BILLINGS –”Silence is one of the hardest arguments I to refute.”   

JOSH BILLINGS –”There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.”    

JOSH BILLINGS –”There is nothing so easy to learn as experience and nothing so hard to apply.” 

JOSH BILLINGS –”To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.”          

JOSHUA –”Have I not commanded \ you? Be strong and of good courage; be not frightened, neither be dismayed; for the Lord your God is with you ^ wherever you go.”

JOSHUA COOKE –”No beauty’s like the beauty of the mind.”

JOSHUA LICBMAN –”Tolerance is the positive and cordial effort to understand another’s beliefs, practices, and habits without necessarily sharing or accepting them.”

JOSIAH G. HOLLAND — “The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman’s heart.”

JOSPEH ROUX –”Two sorts of writers possess genius; those who think, and those who cause others to think.”

JOUBERT- “Children have more need of models than of critics.”

JOUBERT- “It is better to debate a question without settling it, than to settle it with outdebate.”

JOUBERT –”Success serve man as a pedestal. It makes them seem greater, when not measured by reflection.”

JOUBERT –”Taste is the literary conscience of the soul.”

JOUBERT –”The evening of a well spent life brings its lamp with it.”   

JOURNEY OF HEARTS –”Birth is a beginning and death a destination And life is a journey From childhood to maturity and youth to age; From innocence to awareness and ignorance to knowing; From foolishness to desecration and then perhaps to wisdom. From weakness to strength or from strength to weakness and often back again; From health to sickness and we pray to health again. From offence to forgiveness from loneliness to love from joy to gratitude from pain to compassion from grief to understanding from fear to faith. From defeat to defeat to defeat until looking backwards or ahead We see that victory lies not at some high point along the way but in having made the journey step by step a sacred pilgrimage.”   

JOY BALUCH –”God, private enterprise and government have made me what I am, and now they have to take some of the blame.”

JOY MOORE & RAYMOND LONG –”Night-time noises, shapes and shadows, Creeping round my bed; Dad says it’s imagination, all inside my head. I hear something big and furry Creeping round the house; I’m so frightened, please what is it? …Silly, it’s a mouse. Two green eyes are at the window Staring at the mat; I’m so frightened, please what is it? …Silly, it’s a cat. I can see enormous fingers Pointing right at me; I’m so frightened, please what is it? …Silly, it’s a tree. I can see a great white face that’s Looking in my room; I’m so frightened, please what is it? …Silly, it’s the moon. Night-time noises, shapes and shadows, Couldn’t hurt a flea; They Were just imagination, AH made up by me. Night Noises.”      

JP VASWANI –”Fear is a prison that quickly circulates through the entire system, paralyzing the will, producing a queer sensation in some part or the other of the human body. Yes, fear is the cause of many diseases. Fearlessness ensures health. Do not fear. For God is near!”   

JR LOWELL- “And learn there may be worship without words.”

JR R TOLKIEN –”If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”     

JRD TATA –”Most of our troubles are due to poor implementation… wrong priorities and unattainable targets.”     

JRD TATA- “No excellence perfection, you aim for perfection, you will attain excellence. If you aim for excellence, you will go lower.”

JRR TOLKEIN –”Not all those who wander are lost.”

JS BUCKMINSTER –”The highest exerciser of charity is charity towards the uncharitable,” 

JS HERINEMANSF

Originally published here.