| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: If, then, you will but thoughtfully consider it, you will discover it
is the ordinary person who is chiefly blest in these relations.[10]
While of tyrants, many have been murderers of their own children, many
by their children murdered. Many brothers have been murderers of one
another in contest for the crown;[11] many a monarch has been done to
death by the wife of his bosom,[12] or even by his own familiar
friend, by him of whose affection he was proudest.[13]
[10] Or, "that these more obvious affections are the sanctities of
private life."
[11] Or, "have caught at the throats of brothers"; lit. "been slain
with mutually-murderous hand." Cf. Pind. Fr. 137; Aesch. "Sept. c.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: I passed.
So long as I live, I shall remember the terror of that chase.
I ran near the water's edge, and heard every now and then the splash
of the feet that gained upon me. Far away, hopelessly far,
was the yellow light. All the night about us was black and still.
Splash, splash, came the pursuing feet, nearer and nearer.
I felt my breath going, for I was quite out of training; it whooped
as I drew it, and I felt a pain like a knife at my side. I perceived
the Thing would come up with me long before I reached the enclosure,
and, desperate and sobbing for my breath, I wheeled round upon it
and struck at it as it came up to me,--struck with all my strength.
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: in summer; in the town and in winter they lose their charm. When
you pour out tea for them in the town it seems as though they are
wearing other people's coats, and as though they stirred their
tea too long. In the town, too, Pyotr Sergeyitch spoke sometimes
of love, but the effect was not at all the same as in the
country. In the town we were more vividly conscious of the wall
that stood between us. I had rank and wealth, while he was poor,
and he was not even a nobleman, but only the son of a deacon and
a deputy public prosecutor; we both of us -- I through my youth
and he for some unknown reason -- thought of that wall as very
high and thick, and when he was with us in the town he would
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
