| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: What return shall be made to the man who has never had the wit to be idle
during his whole life; but has been careless of what the many care for--
wealth, and family interests, and military offices, and speaking in the
assembly, and magistracies, and plots, and parties. Reflecting that I was
really too honest a man to be a politician and live, I did not go where I
could do no good to you or to myself; but where I could do the greatest
good privately to every one of you, thither I went, and sought to persuade
every man among you that he must look to himself, and seek virtue and
wisdom before he looks to his private interests, and look to the state
before he looks to the interests of the state; and that this should be the
order which he observes in all his actions. What shall be done to such an
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: not to feel ashamed of our happiness in presence of such misery?"
"Nothing is so cruelly painful as to have powerless desires," I
answered. "Those two poor creatures, the father and son, will never
know how keen our sympathy for them is, any more than the world will
know how beautiful are their lives; they are laying up their treasures
in heaven."
"Oh, how poor this country is!" she said, pointing to a field enclosed
by a dry stone wall, which was covered with droppings of cow's dung
applied symmetrically. "I asked a peasant-woman who was busy sticking
them on, why it was done; she answered that she was making fuel. Could
you have imagined that when those patches of dung have dried, human
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down
the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift -- all
had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new
disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear
ones was sound which he could neither ignore nor understand,
a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a
blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing
quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably
distant or near by -- it seemed both. Its recurrence was
regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He
awaited each new stroke with impatience and -- he knew not
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
