| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: good unto them, and thus thou wilt reap in return their speaking
good of thee.
LI
When thou goest in to any of the great, remember that
Another from above sees what is passing, and that thou shouldst
please Him rather than man. He therefore asks thee:--
"In the Schools, what didst thou call exile, imprisionment,
bonds, death and shame?"
"I called them things indifferent."
"What then dost thou call them now? Are they at all
changed?"
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: Where there is sorrow there in holy ground. Some day people will
realise what that means. They will know nothing of life till they
do, - and natures like his can realise it. When I was brought down
from my prison to the Court of Bankruptcy, between two policemen, -
waited in the long dreary corridor that, before the whole crowd,
whom an action so sweet and simple hushed into silence, he might
gravely raise his hat to me, as, handcuffed and with bowed head, I
passed him by. Men have gone to heaven for smaller things than
that. It was in this spirit, and with this mode of love, that the
saints knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, or stooped to kiss
the leper on the cheek. I have never said one single word to him
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Betty Zane by Zane Grey: softly through the pines; it blew the bright sparks from the burning logs, and
fanned the embers into a red glow; it swept caressingly over the sleeping
savages, but it could not warn them that another wind, the Wind-of-Death, as
near at hand.
A quarter of an hour elapsed. Nearer and nearer; slowly but surely drew the
hunter. With what wonderful patience and self-control did this cold-blooded
Nemesis approach his victims! Probably any other Indian slayer would have
fired his rifle and then rushed to combat with a knife or a tomahawk. Not so
Wetzel. He scorned to use powder. He crept forward like a snake gliding upon
its prey. He slid one hand in front of him and pressed it down on the moss, at
first gently, then firmly, and when he had secured a good hold he slowly
Betty Zane |
