| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: a father, an aged man, but through all, from birth to death, from the cradle
to the grave, I had felt myself doomed. All efforts I had previously made
to secure my freedom had not only failed, but had seemed only to rivet
my fetters the more firmly, and to render my escape more difficult.
Baffled, entangled, and discouraged, I had at times asked myself
the question, May not my condition after all be God's work,
and ordered for a wise purpose, and if so, Is not submission my duty?
A contest had in fact been going on in my mind for a long time,
between the clear consciousness of right and the plausible make-
shifts of theology and superstition. The one held me an abject
slave--a prisoner for life, punished for some transgression in
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Apology by Xenophon: protimontai (oi egemones)}, "as they (leaders) are first in
honour, they should be first in the fulfilment of their duties"
(Jowett).
[34] The commentators quote Libanius, "Apol." vol. iii. p. 39, {kai
dia touto ekalei men Eurulokhos o Kharistios, ekalei de Skopas k
Kranonios, oukh ekista lontes, upiskhnoumenoi}. Cf. Diog. Laert.
ii. 31, {Kharmidou oiketas auto didontos, in' ap' auton
prosodeuoito, oukh eileto}. Cf. id. 65, 74.
[35] See "Hell." II. ii. 10.
[36] {oikteirein eautous}. See L. Dind. ad loc. For an incident in
point see "Mem." II. vii.
The Apology |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: not got to know Almayer pretty well it is almost certain there
would never have been a line of mine in print.
I accepted then--and I am paying yet the price of my sanity. The
possessor of the only flock of geese on the East Coast is
responsible for the existence of some fourteen volumes, so far.
The number of geese he had called into being under adverse
climatic conditions was considerably more than fourteen. The
tale of volumes will never overtake the counting of heads, I am
safe to say; but my ambitions point not exactly that way, and
whatever the pangs the toil of writing has cost me I have always
thought kindly of Almayer.
A Personal Record |
