| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: faith, and is also the commencement of disorder; swift apprehension is
(only) a flower of the Tao, and is the beginning of stupidity.
7. Thus it is that the Great man abides by what is solid, and eschews
what is flimsy; dwells with the fruit and not with the flower. It is
thus that he puts away the one and makes choice of the other.
39. 1. The things which from of old have got the One (the Tao) are--
Heaven which by it is bright and pure;
Earth rendered thereby firm and sure;
Spirits with powers by it supplied;
Valleys kept full throughout their void
All creatures which through it do live
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: her mother-in-law and Clym. Wildeve, notwithstanding his
complaints against his fate, had been seized upon by destiny
and placed in the sunshine once more. Eleven thousand
pounds! From every Egdon point of view he was a rich man.
In Eustacia's eyes, too, it was an ample sum--one sufficient
to supply those wants of hers which had been stigmatized
by Clym in his more austere moods as vain and luxurious.
Though she was no lover of money she loved what money
could bring; and the new accessories she imagined around
him clothed Wildeve with a great deal of interest.
She recollected now how quietly well-dressed he had been
Return of the Native |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: not move then, I became alarmed and laid my hand upon his shoulder,
as I thought--and there was no such thing.
For all these reasons, and for others less easily and briefly
statable, I find the early morning to be my most ghostly time. Any
house would be more or less haunted, to me, in the early morning;
and a haunted house could scarcely address me to greater advantage
than then.
I walked on into the village, with the desertion of this house upon
my mind, and I found the landlord of the little inn, sanding his
door-step. I bespoke breakfast, and broached the subject of the
house.
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