| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Cavalry General by Xenophon: Hippocrates' speech before the battle of Delium, 424 B.C.
[5] A "parfait marechal."
He must also, as it appears to me, be capable of great physical
endurance;[6] since clearly, if he has to run full tilt against an
armament present, as we picture, in such force that not even our whole
state cares to cope with it, it is plain he must accept whatever fate
is due, where might is right, himself unable to retaliate.
[6] So Jason, "Hell." VI. i. 4.
If, on the contrary, he elect to guard the territory outside the
walls[7] with a number just sufficient to keep a look-out on the
enemy, and to withdraw into safe quarters from a distance whatever
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: gurdy, the other with a cage of white mice. The coach passed on,
and their small Italian chatter died in the distance; and I was
left to marvel how they had wandered into that country, and how
they fared in it, and what they thought of it, and when (if ever)
they should see again the silver wind-breaks run among the olives,
and the stone-pine stand guard upon Etruscan sepulchres.
Upon any American, the strangeness of this incident is somewhat
lost. For as far back as he goes in his own land, he will find
some alien camping there; the Cornish miner, the French or Mexican
half-blood, the negro in the South, these are deep in the woods and
far among the mountains. But in an old, cold, and rugged country
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: them, as if your mind had kept firm hold of your responsibility
during the hours of sleep.
You contemplate mentally your mischance, till little by little your
mood changes, cold doubt steals into the very marrow of your bones,
you see the inexplicable fact in another light. That is the time
when you ask yourself, How on earth could I have been fool enough
to get there? And you are ready to renounce all belief in your
good sense, in your knowledge, in your fidelity, in what you
thought till then was the best in you, giving you the daily bread
of life and the moral support of other men's confidence.
The ship is lost or not lost. Once stranded, you have to do your
The Mirror of the Sea |
