| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: {lambanousin}, transl. "what brilliant honour, what bright credit
they assume."
[14] "To have played his part in counsel." See "Anab." passim, and M.
Taine, "Essais de Critique," "Xenophon," p. 128.
[15] Lit. "they do not indulge in false additions, pretending to have
put more enemies to death than actually fell."
[16] Cf. "Hipparch," viii. 11; "Cyrop." VIII. iii. 25; "Thuc." i. 49.
But the tyrant, when he forebodes, or possibly perceives in actual
fact, some opposition brewing, and puts the suspects[17] to the sword,
knows he will not thereby promote the welfare of the state
collectively. The cold clear fact is, he will have fewer subjects to
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: delightful, from what St. Francis of Assisi calls 'my brother the
wind, and my sister the rain,' lovely things both of them, down to
the shop-windows and sunsets of great cities. If I made a list of
all that still remains to me, I don't know where I should stop:
for, indeed, God made the world just as much for me as for any one
else. Perhaps I may go out with something that I had not got
before. I need not tell you that to me reformations in morals are
as meaningless and vulgar as Reformations in theology. But while
to propose to be a better man is a piece of unscientific cant, to
have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have
suffered. And such I think I have become.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: hardly husband-high, went with the rest of the maidens,
for 'a was a good, runner afore she got so heavy.
When she came home I said--we were then just beginning
to walk together--'What have ye got, my honey?'
'I've won--well, I've won--a gown-piece,' says she,
her colours coming up in a moment. 'Tis a smock for a crown,
I thought; and so it turned out. Ay, when I think what
she'll say to me now without a mossel of red in her face,
it do seem strange that 'a wouldn't say such a little thing
then....However, then she went on, and that's what made
me bring up the story. Well, whatever clothes I've won,
Return of the Native |
