| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: most constant resident in the city, which, as you never leave, you may be
supposed to love (compare Phaedr.). For you never went out of the city
either to see the games, except once when you went to the Isthmus, or to
any other place unless when you were on military service; nor did you
travel as other men do. Nor had you any curiosity to know other states or
their laws: your affections did not go beyond us and our state; we were
your especial favourites, and you acquiesced in our government of you; and
here in this city you begat your children, which is a proof of your
satisfaction. Moreover, you might in the course of the trial, if you had
liked, have fixed the penalty at banishment; the state which refuses to let
you go now would have let you go then. But you pretended that you
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: after her with set lips. The servant stole up to the coffin,
bent over it for a moment, and then slipped away to the kitchen,
leaving Steavens, the lawyer, and the father to themselves. The
old man stood trembling and looking down at his dead son's face.
The sculptor's splendid head seemed even more noble in its rigid
stillness than in life. The dark hair had crept down upon the
wide forehead; the face seemed strangely long, but in it there
was not that beautiful and chaste repose which we expect to find
in the faces of the dead. The brows were so drawn that there
were two deep lines above the beaked nose, and the chin was
thrust forward defiantly. It was as though the strain of life
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: that is not its equal in suffering. Profound suffering makes
noble: it separates.--One of the most refined forms of disguise
is Epicurism, along with a certain ostentatious boldness of
taste, which takes suffering lightly, and puts itself on the
defensive against all that is sorrowful and profound. They are
"gay men" who make use of gaiety, because they are misunderstood
on account of it--they WISH to be misunderstood. There are
"scientific minds" who make use of science, because it gives a
gay appearance, and because scientificness leads to the
conclusion that a person is superficial--they WISH to mislead to
a false conclusion. There are free insolent minds which would
Beyond Good and Evil |
