| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: I was incisive. "Nothing."
"And to the boy himself?"
I was wonderful. "Nothing."
She gave with her apron a great wipe to her mouth. "Then I'll stand by you.
We'll see it out."
"We'll see it out!" I ardently echoed, giving her my hand to make
it a vow.
She held me there a moment, then whisked up her apron again with her
detached hand. "Would you mind, miss, if I used the freedom--"
"To kiss me? No!" I took the good creature in my arms and, after we
had embraced like sisters, felt still more fortified and indignant.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded white stones
like paving-stones, excepting one or two short sand beaches, and is
so steep that in many places a single leap will carry you into water
over your head; and were it not for its remarkable transparency,
that would be the last to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the
opposite side. Some think it is bottomless. It is nowhere muddy,
and a casual observer would say that there were no weeds at all in
it; and of noticeable plants, except in the little meadows recently
overflowed, which do not properly belong to it, a closer scrutiny
does not detect a flag nor a bulrush, nor even a lily, yellow or
white, but only a few small heart-leaves and potamogetons, and
Walden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: can come to pass? What shall cast me down or disturb me? What
shall seem painful? Shall I not use the power to the end for
which I received it, instead of moaning and wailing over what
comes to pass?
XV
If what philosophers say of the kinship of God and Man be
true, what remains for men to do but as Socrates did:--never,
when asked one's country, to answer, "I am an Athenian or a
Corinthian," but "I am a citizen of the world."
XVI
He that hath grasped the administration of the World, who
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
