| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: for the sake of pious discipline, and what was in those days
called social order, namely, the preservation of the privileges
of the few who happened to have any, at the expense of the swinish
multitude who happened to have none, except that of working and
being shot at for the benefit of their betters, which is obviously
not the meaning of social order in our more enlightened times:
let us therefore be grateful to Providence, and sing Te Deum laudamus
in chorus with the Holy Alliance.
The little friar, however, though he found the lady spotless,
found the butler a great sinner: at least so it was conjectured,
from the length of time he always took to confess him in the buttery.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: a patron, in a blase' way, of the prize-ring; a man who sucked
the essence out of a science or philosophy in an indifferent,
gentlemanly way; who took Kant, Novalis, Humboldt, for what they
were worth in his own scales; accepting all, despising nothing,
in heaven, earth, or hell, but one-idead men; with a temper
yielding and brilliant as summer water, until his Self was
touched, when it was ice, though brilliant still. Such men are
not rare in the States.
As he knocked the ashes from his cigar, Wolfe caught with a
quick pleasure the contour of the white hand, the blood-glow of
a red ring he wore. His voice, too, and that of Kirby's,
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: benefited by him--like the sun that warms, the food that sustains
them? What Physician applies to men to come and be healed?
(Though indeed I hear that the Physicians at Rome do nowadays
apply for patients--in my time they were applied to.) I apply to
you to come and hear that you are in evil case; that what
deserves your attention most in the last thing to gain it; that
you know not good from evil, and are in short a hapless wretch; a
fine way to apply! though unless the words of the Philosopher
affect you thus, speaker and speech are alike dead.
CXXI
A Philosopher's school is a Surgery: pain, not pleasure, you
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
