| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: married at least ten times. (It is true that there now exist, at
least so I have heard, pure young people who feel and know that
this is not a joke, but a serious matter. May God come to their
aid! But in my time there was not to be found one such in a
thousand.)
"And all know it, and pretend not to know it. In all the novels
are described down to the smallest details the feelings of the
characters, the lakes and brambles around which they walk; but,
when it comes to describing their GREAT love, not a word is
breathed of what HE, the interesting character, has previously
done, not a word about his frequenting of disreputable houses, or
The Kreutzer Sonata |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Brother of Daphne by Dornford Yates: it prudent to get over the wall. I did so with about four
seconds to spare. Nothing daunted, the winning animal took a
short run and butted the wall with surprising vigour. When three
large stones had fallen for seven runs, I offered up a short
prayer that Berry & Co. might return to look for me, and hastened
to put two more walls between us. I suppose it was the river
that I saw in the distance, from the summit of that fair hill...
Three and a half hours later I came upon the first signs of
animal life as opposed to vegetable- since the ram. Up hill,
down dale, along roads, along imitation roads, along future
roads, along past roads, across moors I had tramped doggedly,
The Brother of Daphne |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: meanwhile this common, effectual and fruitful prayer perishes and
its omission is unnoticed because of such display, in this he has
what he seeks. For when prayer languishes, no one will take
anything from him, and no one will withstand him. But if he
noticed that we wished to practise this prayer, even if it were
under a straw roof or in a pig-sty, he would indeed not endure
it, but would fear such a pig-sty far more than all the high, big
and beautiful churches, towers and bells in existence, if such
prayer be not in them. It is indeed not a question of the places
and buildings in which we assemble, but only of this
unconquerable prayer, that we pray it and bring it before God as
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