| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: persons, condemning this and that, approving the other? Or
suppose a man sneers and jeers or shows a malignant temper? Has
any among us the skill of the lute-player, who knows at the first
touch which strings are out of tune and sets the instrument
right: has any of you such power as Socrates had, in all his
intercourse with men, of winning them over to his own
convictions? Nay, but you must needs be swayed hither and thither
by the uninstructed. How comes it then that they prove so much
stronger than you? Because they speak from the fulness of the
heart--their low, corrupt views are their real convictions:
whereas your fine sentiments are but from the lips, outwards;
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: burnt--extinct volcanos, as they are called.
The man who saw it--a very good friend of mine, and a very good
man of science also--went last year to see an eruption on
Vesuvius, not from the main crater, but from a small one which had
risen up suddenly on the outside of it; and he gave me leave (when
I told him that I was writing for children) to tell them what he
saw.
This new cone, he said, was about 200 feet high, and perhaps 80 or
100 feet across at the top. And as he stood below it (it was not
safe to go up it) smoke rolled up from its top, "rosy pink below,"
from the glare of the caldron, and above "faint greenish or
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: laugh, "you will soon come to know more than I do."
A pause followed, during which the professor studied the drawing of
the officer's head.
"It is a masterpiece! worthy of Salvator Rosa!" he exclaimed, with the
energy of an artist.
All the pupils rose on hearing this, and Mademoiselle Thirion darted
forward with the velocity of a tiger on its prey. At this instant, the
prisoner, awakened, perhaps, by the noise, began to move. Ginevra
knocked over her stool, said a few incoherent sentences, and began to
laugh; but she had thrown the portrait into her portfolio before
Amelie could get to her. The easel was now surrounded; Servin
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