| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: this intention, who stands forth a champion of this cause, and
says, "All else I renounce, content if I am but able to pass my
life free from hindrance and trouble; to raise my head aloft and
face all things as a free man; to look up to heaven as a friend
of God, fearing nothing that may come to pass!" Point out such a
one to me, that I may say, "Enter, young man, into possession of
that which is thine own. For thy lot is to adorn Philosophy.
Thine are these possessions; thine these books, these
discourses!"
And when our champion has duly exercised himself in this
part of the subject, I hope he will come back to me and say:--
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister: right now. You go and tell the agent to hustle and fix his room up for a
lady, and I'll bring her along."
I found the agent willing, of course, to sleep on the floor of the
office. The toy station was also his home. The front compartment held the
ticket and telegraph and mail and express chattels, and the railing, and
room for the public to stand; through a door you then passed to the
sitting, dining, and sleeping box; and through another to a cooking-stove
in a pigeon-hole. Here flourished the agent and his lungs, and here the
company's strict orders bade him sleep in charge; so I helped him put his
room to rights. But we need not have hurried ourselves. Mr. McLean was so
long in bringing the lady that I went out and found him walking and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: making, or over a game at backgammon, when they have exhausted the
usual stock of /dots/, and have married everybody off according to the
genealogies which they all know by heart. Their womenkind are haughty
dames, who assume the airs of Court ladies in their basket chaises.
They huddle themselves up in shawls and caps by way of full dress; and
twice a year, after ripe deliberation, have a new bonnet from Paris,
brought as opportunity offers. Exemplary wives are they for the most
part, and garrulous.
These are the principal elements of aristocratic gentility, with a few
outlying old maids of good family, spinsters who have solved the
problem: given a human being, to remain absolutely stationary. They
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