| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: in excellence.
CXXVI
Have you again forgotten? Know you not that a good man does
nothing for appearance' sake, but for the sake of having done
right? . . .
"Is there no reward then?"
Reward! do you seek any greater reward for a good man than
doing what is right and just? Yet at the Great Games you look for
nothing else; there the victor's crown you deem enough. Seems it
to you so small a thing and worthless, to be a good man, and
happy therein?
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: now be the most celebrated town in the universe.
Very recently I began to build a book in which one of the minor
characters touches incidentally upon a project for a monument to Adam,
and now the TRIBUNE has come upon a trace of the forgotten jest of
thirty years ago. Apparently mental telegraphy is still in business.
It is odd; but the freaks of mental telegraphy are usually odd.
***
A HUMANE WORD FROM SATAN
[The following letter, signed by Satan and purporting to come from him,
we have reason to believe was not written by him, but by Mark Twain.--
Editor.]
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen: when we have the Shoes of Fortune on our feet. Now just listen to what
happened to the watchman.
As to ourselves, we all know the speed produced by the employment of steam; we
have experienced it either on railroads, or in boats when crossing the sea;
but such a flight is like the travelling of a sloth in comparison with the
velocity with which light moves. It flies nineteen million times faster than
the best race-horse; and yet electricity is quicker still. Death is an
electric shock which our heart receives; the freed soul soars upwards on the
wings of electricity. The sun's light wants eight minutes and some seconds to
perform a journey of more than twenty million of our Danish* miles; borne by
electricity, the soul wants even some minutes less to accomplish the same
Fairy Tales |
