| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: wondrous good fortune of dreams--
"Have glimpses that will make him less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."
But all this, you must remember, depends upon something secret and
incalculable, something that we can neither command nor predict. It
is an affair of gift, not of wages. Fish (and the other good things
which are like sauce to the catching of them) cast no shadow before.
Water is the emblem of instability. No one can tell what he shall
draw out of it until he has taken in his line. Herein are found the
true charm and profit of angling for all persons of a pure and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon: is beautiful on man and one on woman; and so with fragrance: what
becomes the woman, ill becomes the man. Did ever man anoint himself
with oil of myrrh to please his fellow? Women, and especially young
women (like our two friends' brides, Niceratus' and Critobulus'), need
no perfume, being but compounds themselves of fragrance.[5] No,
sweeter than any perfume else to women is good olive-oil, suggestive
of the training-school:[6] sweet if present, and when absent longed
for. And why? Distinctions vanish with the use of perfumes. The
freeman and the slave have forthwith both alike one odour. But the
scents derived from toils--those toils which every free man loves[7]--
need customary habit first, and time's distillery, if they are to be
The Symposium |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: with a smiling implication that not if HE could help it should Paul
Ivanovitch slip or fall. Nevertheless this conduct appeared to
embarrass Chichikov, either because he could not find any fitting
words of gratitude or because he considered the proceeding tiresome;
and it was with a sense of relief that he debouched upon the square
where the municipal offices--a large, three-storied building of a
chalky whiteness which probably symbolised the purity of the souls
engaged within--were situated. No other building in the square could
vie with them in size, seeing that the remaining edifices consisted
only of a sentry-box, a shelter for two or three cabmen, and a long
hoarding--the latter adorned with the usual bills, posters, and
Dead Souls |
