| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: walking alone; when alone he may walk, jump, and do as he will;
but when he drives, he must so guide and adapt himself that the
wagon and horses can follow him, and regard that more than his
own will. So also a prince leads a multitude with him and must
not walk and act as he wills, but as the multitude can,
considering their need and advantage more than his will and
pleasure. For when a prince rules after his own mad will and
follows his own opinion, he is like a mad driver, who rushes
straight ahead with horse and wagon, through bushes, thorns,
ditches, water, up hill and down dale, regardless of roads and
bridges; he will not drive long, all will go to smash.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Than a wave-wash on a shore --
Till a Demon shuts a door.
So, if he be very still
With his Demon, and one will,
Murmurs of it may be blown
To my friend who is alone
In a room that I have known.
After that from everywhere
Singing life will find him there;
Then the door will open wide,
And my friend, again outside,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: ION: Yes, indeed, Socrates; I very much wish that you would: for I love
to hear you wise men talk.
SOCRATES: O that we were wise, Ion, and that you could truly call us so;
but you rhapsodes and actors, and the poets whose verses you sing, are
wise; whereas I am a common man, who only speak the truth. For consider
what a very commonplace and trivial thing is this which I have said--a
thing which any man might say: that when a man has acquired a knowledge of
a whole art, the enquiry into good and bad is one and the same. Let us
consider this matter; is not the art of painting a whole?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And there are and have been many painters good and bad?
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