| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: of youth, is not that to be expected? The burn roars and leaps in
the den; the stream chafes and frets through the rapids of the
glen; the river does not grow calm and smooth until it nears the
sea. Courage is a virtue that the young cannot spare; to lose it
is to grow old before the time; it is better to make a thousand
mistakes and suffer a thousand reverses than to refuse the battle.
Resignation is the final courage of old age; it arrives in its own
season; and it is a good day when it comes to us. Then there are
no more disappointments; for we have learned that it is even better
to desire the things that we have than to have the things that we
desire. And is not the best of all our hopes--the hope of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: him? They seem to me to have no bearing on the point whatever.
SOCRATES: Quite the contrary, my sweet friend: only the poet is talking
in riddles after the fashion of his tribe. For all poetry has by nature an
enigmatical character, and it is by no means everybody who can interpret
it. And if, moreover, the spirit of poetry happen to seize on a man who is
of a begrudging temper and does not care to manifest his wisdom but keeps
it to himself as far as he can, it does indeed require an almost superhuman
wisdom to discover what the poet would be at. You surely do not suppose
that Homer, the wisest and most divine of poets, was unaware of the
impossibility of knowing a thing badly: for it was no less a person than
he who said of Margites that 'he knew many things, but knew them all
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: he merely said what to himself seemed a quite bold enough thing:
"Take my arm."
She took it, thoroughly, up to the shoulder. He felt the warmth
of her body against his, and putting his stick under his other arm
held with his right hand her right as it rested in its place.
"Now we are well together, dear, aren't we?" he observed.
"Yes," said she; adding to herself: "Rather mild!"
"How fast I have become!" he was thinking.
Thus they walked till they reached the foot of the upland, where they
could see the white highway ascending before them in the gloom.
From this point the only way of getting to Arabella's was by going
Jude the Obscure |
