| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: Kingship, for Liberty, for Happiness, for Tranquillity. Remember
God: call upon Him to aid thee, like a comrade that stands beside
thee in the fight.
LXXVIII
Who then is a Stoic--in the sense that we call a statue of
Phidias which is modelled after that master's art? Show me a man
in this sense modelled after the doctrines that are ever upon his
lips. Show me a man that is sick--and happy; an exile--and happy;
in evil report--and happy! Show me him, I ask again. So help me
Heaven, I long to see one Stoic! Nay, if you cannot show me one
fully modelled, let me at least see one in whom the process is at
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: We have named it Cain. She caught it while I was up country
trapping on the North Shore of the Erie; caught it in the timber
a couple of miles from our dug-out--or it might have been four,
she isn't certain which. It resembles us in some ways, and may
be a relation. That is what she thinks, but this is an error,
in my judgment. The difference in size warrants the conclusion
that it is a different and new kind of animal--a fish, perhaps,
though when I put it in the water to see, it sank, and she plunged
in and snatched it out before there was opportunity for the
experiment to determine the matter. I still think it is a fish,
but she is indifferent about what it is, and will not let me have
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: He carried a snug deceit that made him
The man of the time and the place, whatever
The time or the place might be. Were he sounding,
With a genial craft that cloaked its purpose,
Nigh to itself, the depth of a woman
Fooled with his brainless art, or sending
The midnight home with songs and bottles, --
The cad was there, and his ease forever
Shone with the smooth and slippery polish
That tells the snake. That night he drifted
Into an up-town haunt and ordered --
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