| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: elevates and destroys! What a delight to impose emotions on it and
receive none from it, to tame it, never to obey it. If one may ever be
proud of anything, is it not a self-acquired power, of which one is at
once the cause and effect, the principle and the result? Well, no man
knows what I love, nor what I wish. Perhaps what I have loved, or what
I may have wished will be known, as a drama which is accomplished is
known; but to let my game be seen--weakness, mistake! I know nothing
more despicable than strength outwitted by cunning. Can I initiate
myself with a laugh into the ambassador's part, if indeed diplomacy is
as difficult as life? I doubt it. Have you any ambition? Would you
like to become something?"
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: body perforce at stated hours, in heat or in cold; drink no cold
water, nor, it may be, wine. In a word, you must surrender
yourself wholly to your trainer, as though to a physician.
Then in the hour of contest, you will have to delve the
ground, it may chance dislocate an arm, sprain an ankle, gulp
down abundance of yellow sand, be scourge with the whip--and with
all this sometimes lose the victory. Count the cost--and then, if
your desire still holds, try the wrestler's life. Else let me
tell you that you will be behaving like a pack of children
playing now at wrestlers, now at gladiators; presently falling to
trumpeting and anon to stageplaying, when the fancy takes them
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: you wouldn't want to wear that pretty blue dress o' yourn 'way up
country. 'Taint dusty now, but it may be comin' home. No, I
expect you'd rather not wear that and the other hat."
"Oh yes. I shouldn't think of wearing these clothes," said I,
with sudden illumination. "Why, if we're going up country and are
likely to see some of your friends, I'll put on my blue dress, and
you must wear your watch; I am not going at all if you mean to wear
the big hat."
"Now you're behavin' pretty," responded Mrs. Todd, with a gay
toss of her head and a cheerful smile, as she came across the room,
bringing a saucerful of wild raspberries, a pretty piece of salvage
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