| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: More aery, last the bright consummate flower
Spirits odorous breathes: flowers and their fruit,
Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sublimed,
To vital spirits aspire, to animal,
To intellectual; give both life and sense,
Fancy and understanding; whence the soul
Reason receives, and reason is her being,
Discursive, or intuitive; discourse
Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours,
Differing but in degree, of kind the same.
Wonder not then, what God for you saw good
Paradise Lost |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: who values his son above all things, value other things also for the sake
of his son? I mean, for instance, if he knew that his son had drunk
hemlock, and the father thought that wine would save him, he would value
the wine?
He would.
And also the vessel which contains the wine?
Certainly.
But does he therefore value the three measures of wine, or the earthen
vessel which contains them, equally with his son? Is not this rather the
true state of the case? All his anxiety has regard not to the means which
are provided for the sake of an object, but to the object for the sake of
Lysis |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: At the word, Castanier glanced round at the people who were moving
about them. He fancied that he could see astonishment and curiosity in
their eyes, and wishing to be rid of this Englishman at once, he
raised his hand to strike him--and felt his arm paralyzed by some
invisible power that sapped his strength and nailed him to the spot.
He allowed the stranger to take him by the arm, and they walked
together to the green-room like two friends.
"Who is strong enough to resist me?" said the Englishman, addressing
him. "Do you not know that everything here on earth must obey me, that
it is in my power to do everything? I read men's thoughts, I see the
future, and I know the past. I am here, and I can be elsewhere also.
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