| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: The husband not to slay, nor woo the wife!
LIV
In the same way my friend Heraclitus, who had a trifling
suit about a petty farm at Rhodes, first showed the judges that
his cause was just, and then at the finish cried, "I will not
entreat you: nor do I care what sentence you pass. It is you who
are on your trial, not I!"--And so he ended the case.
LV
As for us, we behave like a herd of deer. When they flee
from the huntsman's feathers in affright, which way do they
turn? What haven of safety do they make for? Why, they rush upon
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: earth rested on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and
the tortoise on a serpent; and though it may be an unimportant
coincidence, it will not be out of place here to state, that a
fossil tortoise has lately been discovered in Asia large enough
to support an elephant. I confess that I am partial to these wild
fancies, which transcend the order of time and development. They
are the sublimest recreation of the intellect. The partridge
loves peas, but not those that go with her into the pot.
In short, all good things are wild and free. There is something
in a strain of music, whether produced by an instrument or by the
human voice--take the sound of a bugle in a summer night, for
Walking |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: Ran to her knee like a wildwood fay,
And plucked from her hand the mirror away.
Quickly she set on her own light curls
Her mother's fillet with fringes of pearls;
Quickly she turned with a child's caprice
And pressed on the mirror a swift, glad kiss.
Queen Gulnaar laughed like a tremulous rose:
"Here is my rival, O King Feroz."
THE POET TO DEATH
Tarry a while, O Death, I cannot die
While yet my sweet life burgeons with its spring;
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