| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: she said with a sigh. `But that don't mean I'll lose you.
Look at my papa here; he's been dead all these years,
and yet he is more real to me than almost anybody else.
He never goes out of my life. I talk to him and consult
him all the time. The older I grow, the better I know him
and the more I understand him.'
She asked me whether I had learned to like big cities.
`I'd always be miserable in a city. I'd die of lonesomeness.
I like to be where I know every stack and tree, and where
all the ground is friendly. I want to live and die here.
Father Kelly says everybody's put into this world for something,
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Apology by Xenophon: to believe that I am thus highly honoured by the divine powers.
Chaerephon[25] once, in the presence of many witnesses, put a question
at Delhi concerning me, and Apollo answered that there was no human
being more liberal, or more upright, or more temperate than myself."
And when once more on hearing these words the judges gave vent, as was
only natural, to a fiercer murmur of dissent, Socrates once again
spoke: "Yet, sirs, they were still greater words which the god spake
in oracle concerning Lycurgus,[26] the great lawgiver of Lacedaemon,
than those concerning me. It is said that as he entered the temple the
god addressed him with the words: 'I am considering whether to call
thee god or man.' Me he likened not indeed to a god, but in
The Apology |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: their hand is mended by the endeavor, and is tolerable while it
continues fair and legible.
It may be well my posterity should be informed that to this
little artifice, with the blessing of God, their ancestor ow'd the
constant felicity of his life, down to his 79th year, in which this
is written. What reverses may attend the remainder is in the hand
of Providence; but, if they arrive, the reflection on past happiness
enjoy'd ought to help his bearing them with more resignation.
To Temperance he ascribes his long-continued health, and what is
still left to him of a good constitution; to Industry and Frugality,
the early easiness of his circumstances and acquisition of his fortune,
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
