| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Sportsman by Xenophon: friends.[18] Having their senses dulled to things evil, while more
than commonly alive to pleasures, how shall these be turned to good
account for the salvation of the state? Yet from these evils every one
will easily hold aloof, if once enamoured of those joys whose brief I
hold, since a chivalrous education teaches obedience to laws, and
renders justice familiar to tongue and ear.[19]
[16] See "Hellenica Essays," p. 371.
[17] "To depravity of speech and conduct" (whether as advocates or
performers). See Aristoph. "Clouds."
[18] Or, "bring down on themselves, their children, and their friends
a spring of misfortunes in the shape of diseases, losses, or even
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: world just now become perfect? Oh, for the golden round ball!--
"Get up," said Zarathustra, "thou little thief, thou sluggard! What!
Still stretching thyself, yawning, sighing, failing into deep wells?
Who art thou then, O my soul!" (and here he became frightened, for a
sunbeam shot down from heaven upon his face.)
"O heaven above me," said he sighing, and sat upright, "thou gazest at me?
Thou hearkenest unto my strange soul?
When wilt thou drink this drop of dew that fell down upon all earthly
things,--when wilt thou drink this strange soul--
--When, thou well of eternity! thou joyous, awful, noontide abyss! when
wilt thou drink my soul back into thee?"
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: news burst upon him. From that moment he remembered nothing. But
his mother described his ghastly agitation, as, throwing himself
upon her neck, he told her, through dreadful sobs, the calamity
which had fallen. She did her best to comfort him; but he grew
wilder and wilder, and rolled upon the ground in the agony of an
immeasurable despair. She trembled for his reason and his life.
And when the messengers came to seek him, she spoke but the simple
truth in saying that he was like one distracted. Yet no sooner had
a glimpse of light dawned on him that some vague suspicion rested
on him in reference to the murder, than he started up, flung away
his agitation, and, with a calmness which was awful, answered every
|
