| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: their leaves, and folded up upon themselves lie in quietness and
rest? How else, as the Moon waxes and wanes, as the Sun
approaches and recedes, can it be that such vicissitude and
alternation is seen in earthly things?
"If then all things that grow, nay, our own bodies, are thus
bound up with the whole, is not this still truer of our souls?
And if our souls are bound up and in contact with God, as being
very parts and fragments plucked from Himself, shall He not feel
every movement of theirs as though it were His own, and belonging
to His own nature?"
XXXVII
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: not to entertain any idea of marriage with Thomasin,
even to oblige her.
But this was not all. Years ago there had been in his
mother's mind a great fancy about Thomasin and himself.
It had not positively amounted to a desire, but it had
always been a favourite dream. That they should be man
and wife in good time, if the happiness of neither
were endangered thereby, was the fancy in question.
So that what course save one was there now left for any son
who reverenced his mother's memory as Yeobright did? It
is an unfortunate fact that any particular whim of parents,
Return of the Native |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale: (Love me, my lover, life will not stay)
The bright poinsettia shakes in the wind,
A scarlet leaf is blowing away.
A lizard lifts his head and listens --
Kiss me before the noon goes by,
Here in the shade of the ceiba hide me
From the great black vulture circling the sky.
"If I Must Go"
If I must go to heaven's end
Climbing the ages like a stair,
Be near me and forever bend
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