| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling: said the King to Rahere.
You would have held him prisoner again - as the Great Duke
did," Rahere answered.
'"True," said our King. "He is nothing except his name. Yet
that name might have been used by stronger men to trouble my
England. Yes. I must have made him my life's guest - as I shall
make Robert."
'"I knew it," said Rahere. "But while this man wandered mad
by the wayside, none cared what he called himself."
'"I learned to cease talking before the stones flew," says the old
man, and Hugh groaned.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: In the time of adversity one should prepare for prosperity. I
fancy there are a good many people unconsciously repeating the
mistake of the Canadian farmer--chopping down all the native
growths of life, clearing the ground of all the useless pretty
things that seem to cumber it, sacrificing everything to utility
and success. We fell the last green tree for the sake of raising
an extra hill of potatoes; and never stop to think what an ugly,
barren place we may have to sit in while we eat them. The ideals,
the attachments--yes, even the dreams of youth are worth saving.
For the artificial tastes with which age tries to make good their
loss grow very slowly and cast but a slender shade.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: and smaller, and more and fewer, and differ in degree? For if any one
says: 'Yes, Socrates, but immediate pleasure differs widely from future
pleasure and pain'--To that I should reply: And do they differ in anything
but in pleasure and pain? There can be no other measure of them. And do
you, like a skilful weigher, put into the balance the pleasures and the
pains, and their nearness and distance, and weigh them, and then say which
outweighs the other. If you weigh pleasures against pleasures, you of
course take the more and greater; or if you weigh pains against pains, you
take the fewer and the less; or if pleasures against pains, then you choose
that course of action in which the painful is exceeded by the pleasant,
whether the distant by the near or the near by the distant; and you avoid
|
