| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: at the grotesque expressions on the faces of the crew who were
straining every muscle; but in the fore part of the boat the soldier,
the peasant, and the old beggar woman watched the sailors with the
sympathy naturally felt by toilers who live by the sweat of their brow
and know the rough struggle, the strenuous excitement of effort. These
folk, moreover, whose lives were spent in the open air, had all seen
the warnings of danger in the sky, and their faces were grave. The
young mother rocked her child, singing an old hymn of the Church for a
lullaby.
"If we ever get there at all," the soldier remarked to the peasant,
"it will be because the Almighty is bent on keeping us alive."
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: created by the famous Watteville, who in his active old age was
passionately attached to this magnificent spot.
Between two precipitous hills--little peaks with bare summits known as
the great and the little Rouxey--in the heart of a ravine where the
torrents from the heights, with the Dent de Vilard at their head, come
tumbling to join the lovely upper waters of the Doubs, Watteville had
a huge dam constructed, leaving two cuttings for the overflow. Above
this dam he made a beautiful lake, and below it two cascades; and
these, uniting a few yards below the falls, formed a lovely little
river to irrigate the barren, uncultivated valley, and these two hills
he enclosed in a ring fence, and built himself a retreat on the dam,
Albert Savarus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of War by Sun Tzu: taking themselves off again, the situation is one that demands
great vigilance and circumspection.
[Ts`ao Kung says a maneuver of this sort may be only a ruse
to gain time for an unexpected flank attack or the laying of an
ambush.]
40. If our troops are no more in number than the enemy,
that is amply sufficient; it only means that no direct attack can
be made.
[Literally, "no martial advance." That is to say, CHENG
tactics and frontal attacks must be eschewed, and stratagem
resorted to instead.]
The Art of War |
