| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: "Let us begin from the beginning," said the artist.
The friends went into a narrow passage lighted by a lamp with a
reflector. When they opened the door a man in a black coat, with
an unshaven face like a flunkey's, and sleepy-looking eyes, got
up lazily from a yellow sofa in the hall. The place smelt like a
laundry with an odor of vinegar in addition. A door from the hall
led into a brightly lighted room. The medical student and the
artist stopped at this door and, craning their necks, peeped into
the room.
"Buona sera, signori, rigolleto -- hugenotti -- traviata!" began
the artist, with a theatrical bow.
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: happiness. When a martyr dies in a good cause, when a soldier falls in
battle, we do not suppose that death or wounds are without pain, or that
their physical suffering is always compensated by a mental satisfaction.
Still we regard them as happy, and we would a thousand times rather have
their death than a shameful life. Nor is this only because we believe that
they will obtain an immortality of fame, or that they will have crowns of
glory in another world, when their enemies and persecutors will be
proportionably tormented. Men are found in a few instances to do what is
right, without reference to public opinion or to consequences. And we
regard them as happy on this ground only, much as Socrates' friends in the
opening of the Phaedo are described as regarding him; or as was said of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: but now, when silence and time were such important
considerations, it might well have seemed quite hopeless
to a less resourceful and optimistic man than the son
of the great warlord.
From his father he had learned much concerning the
traits of these mighty beasts, and from Tars Tarkas,
also, when he had visited that great green jeddak among
his horde at Thark. So now he centred upon the work
in hand all that he had ever learned about them from
others and from his own experience, for he, too,
had ridden and handled them many times.
Thuvia, Maid of Mars |
