| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: the "Letters." Flamel suffered his discourse with the bland
inattention that we accord to the affairs of someone else's
suburb, and they reached the shelter of Alexa's tea-table without
a perceptible turn toward the dreaded topic.
The dinner passed off safely. Flamel, always at his best in
Alexa's presence, gave her the kind of attention which is like a
beaconing light thrown on the speaker's words: his answers seemed
to bring out a latent significance in her phrases, as the sculptor
draws his statue from the block. Glennard, under his wife's
composure, detected a sensibility to this manoeuvre, and the
discovery was like the lightning-flash across a nocturnal
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: probably would have sat down pale and trembling, and analyzed his
sensations on paper,--being sincere in all.
He sat down on the school-house step, which the boys had hacked
and whittled rough, and waited; for he was there by appointment,
to meet Dr. Knowles.
Knowles had gone out early in the morning to look at the ground
he was going to buy for his Phalanstery, or whatever he chose to
call it. He was to bring the deed of sale of the mill out with
him for Holmes. The next day it was to be signed. Holmes saw
him at last lumbering across the prairie, wiping the perspiration
from his forehead. Summer or winter, he contrived to be always
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of War by Sun Tzu: restitution, declaring the Lu was being unjustly treated because
she was a smaller and a weaker state. Huan Kung, in peril of his
life, was obliged to consent, whereupon Ts`ao Kuei flung away his
dagger and quietly resumed his place amid the terrified
assemblage without having so much as changed color. As was to be
expected, the Duke wanted afterwards to repudiate the bargain,
but his wise old counselor Kuan Chung pointed out to him the
impolicy of breaking his word, and the upshot was that this bold
stroke regained for Lu the whole of what she had lost in three
pitched battles.]
29. The skillful tactician may be likened to the SHUAI-JAN.
The Art of War |
