| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: to lead a quiet life! Do you mind my saying that I have
guessed what never once occurred to me before our marriage--
that you were in love, and are in love, with Jude Fawley!"
"You may go on guessing that I am, since you have begun.
But do you suppose that if I had been I should have asked you
to let me go and live with him?"
The ringing of the school bell saved Phillotson from the necessity
of replying at present to what apparently did not strike him
as being such a convincing ARGUMENTUM AD VERECUNDIAM as she,
in her loss of courage at the last moment, meant it to appear.
She was beginning to be so puzzling and unstateable that he was ready
Jude the Obscure |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: rhinoceros or tiger, and enters a host without having to avoid buff
coat or sharp weapon. The rhinoceros finds no place in him into which
to thrust its horn, nor the tiger a place in which to fix its claws,
nor the weapon a place to admit its point. And for what reason?
Because there is in him no place of death.
51. 1. All things are produced by the Tao, and nourished by its
outflowing operation. They receive their forms according to the
nature of each, and are completed according to the circumstances of
their condition. Therefore all things without exception honour the
Tao, and exalt its outflowing operation.
2. This honouring of the Tao and exalting of its operation is not the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister: would without doubt have noticed him and his foreboding gravity but for
Mr. Diggs's experiences in the Civil War.
The repast was finished--so far as eating went. Mrs. Diggs with
changeless dudgeon was removing and washing the dishes. At the
revellers' elbows stood the 1820 port in its fine, fat, old, dingy
bottle, going pretty fast. Mr. Diggs was nearing the end of Antietam."
That morning of the 18th, while McClellan was holdin' us squattin' and
cussin'," he was saying to Bertie, when some sort of shuffling sound in
the corner caught their attention. We can never know how it happened.
Billy ought to know, but does not, and Mrs. Diggs allowed no subsequent
reference to the casualty. But there she stood with her entire hair at
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