| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lady Susan by Jane Austen: with all your fears about your brother. I had intended to write to Reginald
myself as soon as my eyes would let me, to point out, as well as I could,
the danger of an intimate acquaintance, with so artful a woman as Lady
Susan, to a young man of his age, and high expectations. I meant,
moreover, to have reminded him of our being quite alone now, and very much
in need of him to keep up our spirits these long winter evenings. Whether
it would have done any good can never be settled now, but I am excessively
vexed that Sir Reginald should know anything of a matter which we foresaw
would make him so uneasy. He caught all your fears the moment he had read
your letter, and I am sure he has not had the business out of his head
since. He wrote by the same post to Reginald a long letter full of it all,
Lady Susan |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: For feasts of love I have been call'd unto,
Till now did ne'er invite, nor never woo.
'All my offences that abroad you see
Are errors of the blood, none of the mind;
Love made them not; with acture they may be,
Where neither party is nor true nor kind:
They sought their shame that so their shame did find;
And so much less of shame in me remains,
By how much of me their reproach contains.
'Among the many that mine eyes have seen,
Not one whose flame my heart so much as warm'd,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: live deceived and prone to fall, unjust, intemperate, in abject
whining at his lot?--None. Then doth no wicked man live as he
would, and therefore neither is he free.
CXXXVII
Thus do the more cautious of travellers act. The road is
said to be beset by robbers. The traveller will not venture
alone, but awaits the companionship on the road of an ambassador,
a quaestor or a proconsul. To him he attaches himself and thus
passes by in safety. So doth the wise man in the world. Many are
the companies of robbers and tyrants, many the storms, the
straits, the losses of all a man holds dearest. Whither shall he
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
