| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 10
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
The Waste Land |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: a young man, entered upon public life, and were pleading causes
and making a name, who any longer seemed equal to you? And at
what moment would you have endured another examining your
principles and proving that they were unsound? What then am I to
say to you? "Help me in this matter!" you cry. Ah, for that I
have no rule! And neither did you, if that was your object, come
to me as a philosopher, but as you might have gone to a herb-seller
or a cobbler.--"What do philosophers have rules for,
then?"--Why, that whatever may betide, our ruling faculty may be
as Nature would have it, and so remain. Think you this a small
matter? Not so! but the greatest thing there is. Well, does it
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Red Seal by Natalie Sumner Lincoln: ill-temper only by an exertion of will-power. She detested being
kept waiting, and that morning she had many errands to attend to
before the luncheon hour.
"May I use your telephone?" she asked Mr. Clymer's secretary, and
the young man rose with alacrity from his desk. Mrs. Brewster never
knew what it was to lack attention, even her own sex were known on
occasions to give her gowns and, (what captious critics termed her
"frivolous conduct") undivided attention.
"Can I look up the number for you?" the secretary asked as Mrs.
Brewster took up the telephone book and fumbled for the gold chain
of her lorgnette.
The Red Seal |
