| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: received the news in the most unexpected manner, and when
Gertrude came out to tell me how she had stood it, I think she
was almost shocked.
"She just lay and stared at me, Aunt Ray," she said. "Do you
know, I believe she is glad, glad! And she is too honest to
pretend anything else. What sort of man was Mr. Paul Armstrong,
anyhow?"
"He was a bully as well as a rascal, Gertrude," I said. "But I
am convinced of one thing; Louise will send for Halsey now, and
they will make it all up."
For Louise had steadily refused to see Halsey all that day, and
 The Circular Staircase |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: But even Gretz is changed. The old inn, long shored and trussed
and buttressed, fell at length under the mere weight of years, and
the place as it was is but a fading image in the memory of former
guests. They, indeed, recall the ancient wooden stair; they recall
the rainy evening, the wide hearth, the blaze of the twig fire, and
the company that gathered round the pillar in the kitchen. But the
material fabric is now dust; soon, with the last of its
inhabitants, its very memory shall follow; and they, in their turn,
shall suffer the same law, and, both in name and lineament, vanish
from the world of men. "For remembrance of the old house' sake,"
as Pepys once quaintly put it, let me tell one story. When the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: win distinction! O the multitude of hands there will be to rob
me! And if I succeed, Caesar too is but a mortal. While should it
come to pass that I offend him, whither shall I flee from his
presence? To the wilderness? And may not fever await me there?
What then is to be done? Cannot a fellow-traveller be found that
is honest and loyal, stong and secure against surprise? Thus doth
the wise man reason, considering that if he would pass through in
safety, he must attach himself unto God.
CXXXVIII
"How understandest thou attach himself to God?"
That what God wills, he should will also; that what God
 The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |