| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Apology by Xenophon: making Socrates thus address his judges: {to de de meta touto
epithumo umin khresmodesai, o katapsephisamenoi mou' kai gar eimi
ede entautha, en o malist' anthropoi khresmodousin, otan mellosin
apothaneisthai}. "And now, O men who have condemned me, I would
fain prophesy to you, for I am about to die, and that is the hour
at which all men are gifted with prophetic power" (Jowett).
The prophecy proved true. The young man fell a victim to the pleasures
of wine; night and day he never ceased drinking, and at last became a
mere good-for-nothing, worthless alike to his city, his friends, and
himself. As to Anytus, even though the grave has closed upon him, his
evil reputation still survives him, due alike to his son's base
The Apology |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: inscribed by the hand of the poet himself: "For her whose wishes must be
obeyed" ... "The happier Helen of our days" ... disgraceful to say, she
had never read them. And Croom on the Mind and Bates on the Savage
Customs of Polynesia ("My dear, stand still," she said)--neither of those
could one send to the Lighthouse. At a certain moment, she supposed, the
house would become so shabby that something must be done. If they could
be taught to wipe their feet and not bring the beach in with them--that
would be something. Crabs, she had to allow, if Andrew really wished to
dissect them, or if Jasper believed that one could make soup from seaweed,
one could not prevent it; or Rose's objects--shells, reeds, stones; for
they were gifted, her children, but all in quite different ways. And the
To the Lighthouse |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: *****
In all situations women have more cause for suffering than men, and
they suffer more. Man has strength and the power of exercising it; he
acts, moves, thinks, occupies himself; he looks ahead, and sees
consolation in the future. It was thus with Charles. But the woman
stays at home; she is always face to face with the grief from which
nothing distracts her; she goes down to the depths of the abyss which
yawns before her, measures it, and often fills it with her tears and
prayers. Thus did Eugenie. She initiated herself into her destiny. To
feel, to love, to suffer, to devote herself,--is not this the sum of
woman's life? Eugenie was to be in all things a woman, except in the
Eugenie Grandet |
