| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the dangers of that savage world. She might hate me,
and revile me, and heap indignity after indignity upon me,
as she already had, until I should have hated her;
but the pitiful fact remained that I loved her, and I
couldn't leave her there alone.
The more I thought about it the madder I got,
so that by the time I reached the valley I was furious,
and the result of it was that I turned right around
and went up that cliff again as fast as I had come down.
I saw that Dian had left the ledge and gone within the cave,
but I bolted right in after her. She was lying upon her
At the Earth's Core |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: the Happy Valley disgusted me by the recurrence of its luxuries;
yet I could not forbear to reproach myself with impatience when I
saw the monks of St. Anthony support, without complaint, a life,
not of uniform delight, but uniform hardship."
"Those men," answered Imlac, "are less wretched in their silent
convent than the Abyssinian princes in their prison of pleasure.
Whatever is done by the monks is incited by an adequate and
reasonable motive. Their labour supplies them with necessaries; it
therefore cannot be omitted, and is certainly rewarded. Their
devotion prepares them for another state, and reminds them of its
approach while it fits them for it. Their time is regularly
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: you are the head and chief? And for my part, I hold it ill becomes a
tyrant to enter the lists with private citizens. For take the case he
wins, he will not be admired, but be envied rather, when is is thought
how many private fortunes go to swell the stream of his expenditure;
while if he loses, he will become a laughing-stock to all mankind.[9]
[9] Or, "you will be mocked and jeered at past all precedence," as
historically was the fate of Dionysus, 388 or 384 B.C. (?); and
for the possible connection between that incident and this
treatise see Lys. "Olymp."; and Prof. Jebb's remarks on the
fragment, "Att. Or." i. p. 203 foll. Grote, "H. G." xi. 40 foll.;
"Plato, iii. 577.
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