| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: to his infirmity and then perforce as an excuse for some trouble he
put me to, and so slightly worded that I paid no heed. This is a
good measure of his courage under sufferings of which none but the
untried will think lightly. And I think it worth noting how this
optimist was acquainted with pain. It will seem strange only to
the superficial. The disease of pessimism springs never from real
troubles, which it braces men to bear, which it delights men to
bear well. Nor does it readily spring at all, in minds that have
conceived of life as a field of ordered duties, not as a chase in
which to hunt for gratifications. 'We are not here to be happy,
but to be good'; I wish he had mended the phrase: 'We are not here
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: Or I shall let thee squat where thou squattest, Haltfoot,--and I carried
thee HIGH!"
"Observe," continued I, "This Moment! From the gateway, This Moment, there
runneth a long eternal lane BACKWARDS: behind us lieth an eternity.
Must not whatever CAN run its course of all things, have already run along
that lane? Must not whatever CAN happen of all things have already
happened, resulted, and gone by?
And if everything have already existed, what thinkest thou, dwarf, of This
Moment? Must not this gateway also--have already existed?
And are not all things closely bound together in such wise that This Moment
draweth all coming things after it? CONSEQUENTLY--itself also?
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: "Do you know what I am thinking of?"
"No."
"Of a plan that has come into my head."
"And what is this plan?"
"I can't tell you yet, but I can tell you what the result would
be. The result would be that in a month I should be free, I
should have no more debts, and we could go and spend the summer
in the country."
"And you can't tell me by what means?"
"No, only love me as I love you, and all will succeed."
"And have you made this plan all by yourself?"
Camille |
