GONE WITH THE WIND

Once upon a time an old man spread rumours that this neighbor was a thief. As a result, the young man was arrested. Days later the young man was proved innocent. After been released he sued the old man for wrongly accusing him. In court the old man told the Judge” “They were just comments, did not harm anyone….”. The Judge, before passing sentence on the case, told the old man: “Write all the things you said about him on a piece of paper. Cut them up and on the way home, throw the pieces of paper out. Tomorrow, come back to hear the sentence. The next day, the judge told the old man:”Before receiving the sentence, you will have to go out and gather all the pieces of paper that you threw out yesterday.” The old man said:” I can’t do that! The wind spread them and I won’t know where to find them.” The judge then replied: “The same way, simple comments may destroy the honour of a man to such an extent that one is not able to fix it. If you can’t speak well of someone, it’s better not to say anything.” Let’s all be masters of our mouths, so that we won’t be slaves of our words.

BIG MISTAKE

A new monk arrives at the old Italian monastery for his celibate life of shared poverty and prayer, and is assigned to help the other monks in copying the old texts by hand. He notices, however, that they are copying from copies, not the original manuscripts. So, the new monk goes to the head monk to ask him about this, pointing out that if there were an error in the first copy, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies. The head monk says, “ We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son.” So, he goes down into the cellar with one of the copies to check it against the original. Hours go by and nobody sees him. So, one of the monks goes downstairs to look for him. Hearing sobbing coming from the back of the cellar, he finds the old monk leaning over one of the original books crying, and muttering between tears; “There’s an R! There’s an R!”. He asks the old monk what’s wrong, and in a choked voice came the reply, “ The original word is not “celibate” but “celebrate”.