| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: continent, lay, watched by armed men, in the horror and isolation
of a plague. Old, red Manhattan lies, like an Indian arrowhead
under a steam factory, below anglified New York. The names of the
States and Territories themselves form a chorus of sweet and most
romantic vocables: Delaware, Ohio, Indiana, Florida, Dakota, Iowa,
Wyoming, Minnesota, and the Carolinas; there are few poems with a
nobler music for the ear: a songful, tuneful land; and if the new
Homer shall arise from the Western continent, his verse will be
enriched, his pages sing spontaneously, with the names of states
and cities that would strike the fancy in a business circular.
Late in the evening we were landed in a waiting-room at Pittsburg.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: wife, as all debauches look at beautiful women, with an air of
being interested solely in the subject of conversation,--that is,
in that which did not interest him at all.
"She tried to seem indifferent. But my expression, my jealous or
false smile, which she knew so well, and the voluptuous glances
of the musician, evidently excited her. I saw that, after the
first interview, her eyes were already glittering, glittering
strangely, and that, thanks to my jealousy, between him and her
had been immediately established that sort of electric current
which is provoked by an identity of expression in the smile and
in the eyes.
The Kreutzer Sonata |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: humility), and manifests it to all the world. He is free from self-
display, and therefore he shines; from self-assertion, and therefore
he is distinguished; from self-boasting, and therefore his merit is
acknowledged; from self-complacency, and therefore he acquires
superiority. It is because he is thus free from striving that
therefore no one in the world is able to strive with him.
3. That saying of the ancients that 'the partial becomes complete' was
not vainly spoken:--all real completion is comprehended under it.
23. 1. Abstaining from speech marks him who is obeying the spontaneity
of his nature. A violent wind does not last for a whole morning; a
sudden rain does not last for the whole day. To whom is it that these
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