| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: Sole partner, and sole part, of all these joys,
Dearer thyself than all; needs must the Power
That made us, and for us this ample world,
Be infinitely good, and of his good
As liberal and free as infinite;
That raised us from the dust, and placed us here
In all this happiness, who at his hand
Have nothing merited, nor can perform
Aught whereof he hath need; he who requires
From us no other service than to keep
This one, this easy charge, of all the trees
Paradise Lost |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: an uneasy egotism. These, too, are things human, already distant
in their appeal. It is meet that something more should be left
for the novelist's children than the colours and figures of his
own hard-won creation. That which in their grown-up years may
appear to the world about them as the most enigmatic side of
their natures and perhaps must remain for ever obscure even to
themselves, will be their unconscious response to the still voice
of that inexorable past from which his work of fiction and their
personalities are remotely derived.
Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and
undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme
Some Reminiscences |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: or would you e'en be powerful of limb and body, then must you
habituate limbs and body to obey the mind, and exercise yourself with
toil and sweat.'
[35] Or, "bathed in the splendour of thy virtues."
[36] Or, "honeyed overtures of pleasure."
"At this point, (as Prodicus relates) Vice broke in exclaiming: 'See
you, Heracles, how hard and long the road is by which yonder woman
would escort you to her festal joys.[37] But I will guide you by a
short and easy road to happiness.'
[37] Hesiod, "Theog." 909; Milton, "L'Allegro," 12.
"Then spoke Virtue: 'Nay, wretched one, what good thing hast thou? or
The Memorabilia |
