| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: Yet the actual means by which he gave currency to these principles is
a point which it were well not to overlook. It is clear that the
lawgiver set himself deliberately to provide all the blessings of
heaven for the good man, and a sorry and ill-starred existence for the
coward.
In other states the man who shows himself base and cowardly wins to
himself an evil reputation and the nickname of a coward, but that is
all. For the rest he buys and sells in the same market-place as the
good man; he sits beside him at play; he exercises with him in the
same gymnasium, and all as suits his humour. But at Lacedaemon there
is not one man who would not feel ashamed to welcome the coward at the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: deal on the beach, when the sun was not too fierce; and Carmen
made a canvas bonnet to shield her head and face. Never had she
been allowed to play so much in the sun before; and it seemed to
do her good, though her little bare feet and hands became brown
as copper. At first, it must be confessed, she worried her
foster-mother a great deal by various queer misfortunes and
extraordinary freaks;--getting bitten by crabs, falling into the
bayou while in pursuit of "fiddlers," or losing herself at the
conclusion of desperate efforts to run races at night with the
moon, or to walk to the "end of the world." If she could only
once get to the edge of the sky, she said, she "could climb up."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: my heart flew to thy embrace. I had destined thee for myself, and when I
beheld thee, I made choice of thee anew. I hoped now to know thee, to live
with thee, to be thy friend,--thy--'tis over now and I see thee here!
Egmont. My friend, if it can be any comfort to thee, be assured that the
very moment we met my heart was drawn towards thee. Now listen! Let
us exchange a few quiet words. Tell me: is it the stern, the settled purpose
of thy father to take my life?
Ferdinand. It is.
Egmont. This sentence is not a mere empty scarecrow, designed to terrify
me, to punish me through fear and intimidation, to humiliate me, that he
may then raise me again by the royal favour?
Egmont |
