| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: He sipped his tea and said, as if speaking to
himself, "Yes, many a one!" This exclamation
gave me great hopes. Your old Caucasian officer
loves, I know, to talk and yarn a bit; he so
rarely succeeds in getting a chance to do so. It
may be his fate to be quartered five years or so
with his company in some out-of-the-way place,
and during the whole of that time he will not
hear "good morning" from a soul (because the
sergeant says "good health"). And, indeed, he
would have good cause to wax loquacious --
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: this matter, or say more than what I have said already,--That my uncle Toby
was a gentleman of unparallel'd modesty, which happening to be somewhat
subtilized and rarified by the constant heat of a little family pride,--
they both so wrought together within him, that he could never bear to hear
the affair of my aunt Dinah touch'd upon, but with the greatest emotion.--
The least hint of it was enough to make the blood fly into his face;--but
when my father enlarged upon the story in mixed companies, which the
illustration of his hypothesis frequently obliged him to do,--the
unfortunate blight of one of the fairest branches of the family, would set
my uncle Toby's honour and modesty o'bleeding; and he would often take my
father aside, in the greatest concern imaginable, to expostulate and tell
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: administered in order so harmonious, without a purpose and by
blind chance? There is therefore an Administrator. What is His
nature and how does He administer? And who are we that are His
children and what work were we born to perform? Have we any close
connection or relation with Him or not?
Such are the impressions of the few of whom I speak. And
further, they apply themselves solely to considering and
examining the great assembly before they depart. Well, they are
derided by the multitude. So are the lookers-on by the traders:
aye, and if the beasts had any sense, they would deride those who
thought much of anything but fodder!
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
