| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: them? What Physician applies to men to come and be healed?
(Though indeed I hear that the Physicians at Rome do nowadays
apply for patients--in my time they were applied to.) I apply to
you to come and hear that you are in evil case; that what
deserves your attention most in the last thing to gain it; that
you know not good from evil, and are in short a hapless wretch; a
fine way to apply! though unless the words of the Philosopher
affect you thus, speaker and speech are alike dead.
CXXI
A Philosopher's school is a Surgery: pain, not pleasure, you
should have felt therein. For on entering none of you is whole.
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tik-Tok of Oz by L. Frank Baum: by far the most difficult of the three. Ann had
not only torn her pretty skirt and jacket, but her
crown had become bent and battered and even her
shoes were so cut and slashed that they were ready
to fall from her feet.
The officers had fared somewhat worse than their
leader, for holes were worn in the knees of their
trousers, while sharp points of rock in the roof
and sides of the tunnel had made rags of every
inch of their once brilliant uniforms. A more
tattered and woeful army never came out of a
Tik-Tok of Oz |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: German, perhaps, but I was not past the age of admission, and in
other respects I was well qualified. This expedient to palliate
my folly was thought of--but not by me. I must admit that in
that respect my negative was accepted at once. That order of
feeling was comprehensible enough to the most inimical of my
critics. I was not called upon to offer explanations; the truth
is that what I had in view was not a naval career, but the sea.
There seemed no way open to it but through France. I had the
language at any rate, and of all the countries in Europe it is
with France that Poland has most connection. There were some
facilities for having me a little looked after, at first.
Some Reminiscences |
