| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Koran: Righteousness is not that ye turn your faces towards the east or the
west, but righteousness is, one who believes in God, and the last day,
and the angels, and the Book, and the prophets, and who gives wealth
for His love to kindred, and orphans, and the poor, and the son of the
road, beggars, and those in captivity; and who is steadfast in prayer,
and gives alms; and those who are sure of their covenant when they
make a covenant; and the patient in poverty, and distress, and in time
of violence; these are they who are true, and these are those who
fear.
O ye who believe! Retaliation is prescribed for you for the slain:
the free for the free, the slave for the slave, the female for the
The Koran |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On Horsemanship by Xenophon: bent, and taking care not to place his knee on the horse's back, he
must pass his leg clean over to the off side; and so having brought
his foot well round, plant himself firmly on his seat.[7]
[1] Reading {otan . . . paradexetai . . . os anabesomenos}. Or,
reading {otan paradexetai ton ippea (sc. o. ippos) ws
anabesomenon}, transl. "the horse has been brought round ready for
mounting."
[2] So Courier, "la muserolle." It might be merely a stitched leather
strap or made of a chain in part, which rattled; as
{khrusokhalinon patagon psalion} (Aristoph. "Peace," 155) implies.
"Curb" would be misleading.
On Horsemanship |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: admired his wife, so artless, yet so well-informed, witty, but
natural, lovable and chaste, a girl, and yet a mother, perfectly free,
though bound by the chains of righteousness. The history of all good
homes is that of prosperous peoples; it can be written in two lines,
and has in it nothing for literature. So, as happiness is only
explicable to and by itself, these four years furnish nothing to
relate which was not as tender as the soft outlines of eternal
cherubs, as insipid, alas! as manna, and about as amusing as the tale
of "Astrea."
In 1833, this edifice of happiness, so carefully erected by Felix de
Vandenesse, began to crumble, weakened at its base without his
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