| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: ship had run against that name in the dark!
"'Better fifty years of Europe than a cyclone in the bay,' says High
Jack Snakefeeder. So we get the captain to send us ashore in a dory
when the squall seemed to cease from squalling.
"'We will find ruins here or make 'em,' says High. 'The Government
doesn't care which we do. An appropriation is an appropriation.'
"Boca de Coacoyula was a dead town. Them biblical towns we read
about--Tired and Siphon--after they was destroyed, they must have
looked like Forty-second Street and Broadway compared to this Boca
place. It still claimed 1300 inhabitants as estimated and engraved on
the stone court-house by the census-taker in 1597. The citizens were
Options |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: not an easy question to answer.' 'I should imagine the conception of ideas
to arise as follows: you see great objects pervaded by a common form or
idea of greatness, which you abstract.' 'That is quite true.' 'And
supposing you embrace in one view the idea of greatness thus gained and the
individuals which it comprises, a further idea of greatness arises, which
makes both great; and this may go on to infinity.' Socrates replies that
the ideas may be thoughts in the mind only; in this case, the consequence
would no longer follow. 'But must not the thought be of something which is
the same in all and is the idea? And if the world partakes in the ideas,
and the ideas are thoughts, must not all things think? Or can thought be
without thought?' 'I acknowledge the unmeaningness of this,' says
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of War by Sun Tzu: in showing their emotion. Chang Yu alludes to the mournful
parting at the I River between Ching K`o and his friends, when
the former was sent to attempt the life of the King of Ch`in
(afterwards First Emperor) in 227 B.C. The tears of all flowed
down like rain as he bade them farewell and uttered the following
lines: "The shrill blast is blowing, Chilly the burn; Your
champion is going--Not to return." [1] ]
But let them once be brought to bay, and they will display the
courage of a Chu or a Kuei.
[Chu was the personal name of Chuan Chu, a native of the Wu
State and contemporary with Sun Tzu himself, who was employed by
The Art of War |
