| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: Thou canst make rough things smooth; at Thy voice, lo, jarring disorder
Moveth to music, and Love is born where hatred abounded.
Thus hast Thou fitted alike things good and things evil together,
That over all might reign one Reason, supreme and eternal;
Though thereunto the hearts of the wicked be hardened and heedless--
Woe unto them!--for while ever their hands are grasping at good things,
Blind are their eyes, yea, stopped are their ears to God's Law universal,
Calling through wise disobedience to live the life that is noble.
This they mark not, but heedless of right, turn each to his own way,
Here, a heart fired with ambition, in strife and straining unhallowed;
There, thrusting honour aside, fast set upon getting and gaining;
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Georgics by Virgil: Their wretched limbs together, anon o'erflowed
A watery flux, and all their bones piecemeal
Sapped by corruption to itself absorbed.
Oft in mid sacrifice to heaven- the white
Wool-woven fillet half wreathed about his brow-
Some victim, standing by the altar, there
Betwixt the loitering carles a-dying fell:
Or, if betimes the slaughtering priest had struck,
Nor with its heaped entrails blazed the pile,
Nor seer to seeker thence could answer yield;
Nay, scarce the up-stabbing knife with blood was stained,
Georgics |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: Rutherford, the Lord Advocate, who is of the Ministry, had written
to his friends that we were coming, and several gentlemen came by
breakfast time the next morning. Mr. Gordon, his nephew, married
the daughter of Prof. Wilson, and invited us to dine that day to
meet the professor, etc. . . . We drove out after breakfast into the
country to Hawthornden, formerly the residence of Drummond the poet,
and to Lord Roslin's grounds, where are the ruins of Roslin Castle
and above all, of the Roslin Chapel. . . . After lingering and
admiring long we returned to Edinburgh just in season for dinner at
Mr. Gordon's, where we found Prof. Wilson, and another daughter and
son, Mrs. Rutherford, wife of the Lord Advocate, and Capt.
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