| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry: are wisest. They are the magi.
End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of THE GIFT OF THE MAGI.
The Gift of the Magi |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale: Who gave the flame its changeful
And iridescent fires;
As the driftwood burning
Learned its jewelled blaze
From the sea's blue splendor
Of colored nights and days.
"I Have Loved Hours at Sea"
I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,
The fragile secret of a flower,
Music, the making of a poem
That gave me heaven for an hour;
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: his character, not until his adversary has refused to answer any more
questions. The presentiment of his own fate is hanging over him. He is
aware that Socrates, the single real teacher of politics, as he ventures to
call himself, cannot safely go to war with the whole world, and that in the
courts of earth he will be condemned. But he will be justified in the
world below. Then the position of Socrates and Callicles will be reversed;
all those things 'unfit for ears polite' which Callicles has prophesied as
likely to happen to him in this life, the insulting language, the box on
the ears, will recoil upon his assailant. (Compare Republic, and the
similar reversal of the position of the lawyer and the philosopher in the
Theaetetus).
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