| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: this (nature of the Tao).
22. 1. The partial becomes complete; the crooked, straight; the empty,
full; the worn out, new. He whose (desires) are few gets them; he
whose (desires) are many goes astray.
2. Therefore the sage holds in his embrace the one thing (of
humility), and manifests it to all the world. He is free from self-
display, and therefore he shines; from self-assertion, and therefore
he is distinguished; from self-boasting, and therefore his merit is
acknowledged; from self-complacency, and therefore he acquires
superiority. It is because he is thus free from striving that
therefore no one in the world is able to strive with him.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: phrase is, to shake, but who have learnt Hungarian by themselves.
She conversed perhaps in Hungarian with Corvick; she had remarkably
little English for his friend. Corvick afterwards told me that I
had chilled her by my apparent indisposition to oblige them with
the detail of what Vereker had said to me. I allowed that I felt I
had given thought enough to that indication: hadn't I even made up
my mind that it was vain and would lead nowhere? The importance
they attached to it was irritating and quite envenomed my doubts.
That statement looks unamiable, and what probably happened was that
I felt humiliated at seeing other persons deeply beguiled by an
experiment that had brought me only chagrin. I was out in the cold
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: they were young still. She'd got into a groove; he'd have to force her out
of it, that's all.
He got up and went into the drawing-room, carefully shut the door and took
Anna's photograph from the top of the piano. She wore a white dress with a
big bow of some soft stuff under the chin, and stood, a little stiffly,
holding a sheaf of artificial poppies and corn in her hands. Delicate she
looked even then; her masses of hair gave her that look. She seemed to
droop under the heavy braids of it, and yet she was smiling. Andreas
caught his breath sharply. She was his wife--that girl. Posh! it had only
been taken four years ago. He held it close to him, bent forward and
kissed it. Then rubbed the glass with the back of his hand. At that
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