| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: which he had been that evening. "Yes, she was bound to choose
him. So it had to be, and I cannot complain of any one or
anything. I am myself to blame. What right had I to imagine whe
would care to join her life to mine? Whom am I and what am I? A
nobody, not wanted by any one, nor of use to anybody." And he
recalled his brother Nikolay, and dwelt with pleasure on the
thought of him. "Isn't he right that everytthing in the world is
base and loathsome? And are we fair in our judgment of brother
Nikolay? Of course, from the point of view of Prokofy, seeing
him in a forn cloak and tipsy, he's a despicable person. But I
know him differently. I know his soul, and know that we are like
Anna Karenina |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: what an age ago it seems!--settling the basis of a future state with
the present Secretary for India. We thought ourselves very wise.
I'm not sure we weren't. We were happy, Miss Vinrace, and we were young--
gifts which make for wisdom."
"Have you done what you said you'd do?" she asked.
"A searching question! I answer--Yes and No. If on the one hand I
have not accomplished what I set out to accomplish--which of us does!--
on the other I can fairly say this: I have not lowered my ideal."
He looked resolutely at a sea-gull, as though his ideal flew
on the wings of the bird.
"But," said Rachel, "what _is_ your ideal?"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: we must not let Xenophon, who is a Socratic, talk of the Stoa. If
we knew certainly that the chapter was a much later production,
the language would be appropriate enough.
Very gentle to his friends, to his enemies he was most terrible.
Whilst he could hold out against toil and trouble with the best,
nothing pleased him better than yielding to his comrades. But passion
was kindled in him by beauty of deed rather than of person.[9]
[9] Or, "beauteous deeds rather than bodily splendour."
Skilled in the exercise of self-command in the midst of external
welfare, he could be stout of heart enough in stress of danger.
Urbanity he practised, not with jest and witticisim, but by the
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