| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: visit they beheld a larger pile of wooden chips and a nearer
approximation to something beautiful. It seemed as if the
hamadryad of the oak had sheltered herself from the unimaginative
world within the heart of her native tree, and that it was only
necessary to remove the strange shapelessness that had incrusted
her, and reveal the grace and loveliness of a divinity. Imperfect
as the design, the attitude, the costume, and especially the face
of the image still remained, there was already an effect that
drew the eye from the wooden cleverness of Drowne's earlier
productions and fixed it upon the tantalizing mystery of this new
project.
Mosses From An Old Manse |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: hearers from the paths of quackery and false-seeming,[1] so I am sure
that language like the following was calculated to stimulate his
followers to practise self-control and endurance: self-control in the
matters of eating, drinking, sleeping, and the cravings of lust;
endurance of cold and heat and toil and pain. He had noticed the undue
licence which one of his acquaintances allowed himself in all such
matters.[2] Accordingly he thus addressed him:
[1] This sentence in the Greek concludes Bk. I. There is something
wrong or very awkward in the text here.
[2] Cf. Grote, "Plato," III. xxxviii. p. 530.
Tell me, Aristippus (Socrates said), supposing you had two children
The Memorabilia |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: "And the only man who could have cleared Jack can never do it!"
she said despairingly.
"Also," I replied coldly, "Mr. Armstrong is for ever beyond the
power of defending himself. When your Jack comes to me, with
some two hundred thousand dollars in his hands, which is about
what you have lost, I shall believe him innocent."
Halsey threw his cigarette away and turned on me.
"There you go!" he exclaimed. "If he was the thief, he could
return the money, of course. If he is innocent, he probably
hasn't a tenth of that amount in the world. In his hands!
That's like a woman."
The Circular Staircase |
