| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: sheet jammed and the captain had no knife; this was the only
occasion on the cruise that ever I set a hand to a rope, but I
worked like a Trojan, judging the possibility of haemorrhage better
than the certainty of drowning. Another time I saw a rather
singular thing: our whole ship's company as pale as paper from the
captain to the cook; we had a black squall astern on the port side
and a white squall ahead to starboard; the complication passed off
innocuous, the black squall only fetching us with its tail, and the
white one slewing off somewhere else. Twice we were a long while
(days) in the close vicinity of hurricane weather, but again luck
prevailed, and we saw none of it. These are dangers incident to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: reflections, all the moralizings, small and great, all the bad puns
made on a subject already exhausted by Rabelais three hundred and
fifty years ago. It was not a little to their credit that the
pyrotechnic display was cut short with a final squib from Malaga.
"It all goes to the shoemakers," she said. "I left a milliner because
she failed twice with my hats. The vixen has been here twenty-seven
times to ask for twenty francs. She did not know that we never have
twenty francs. One has a thousand francs, or one sends to one's notary
for five hundred; but twenty francs I have never had in my life. My
cook and my maid may, perhaps, have so much between them; but for my
own part, I have nothing but credit, and I should lose that if I took
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: All life-increasing arts to evil turn;
Where the mind makes the vital breath to burn,
(False) is the strength, (and o'er it we should mourn.)
4. When things have become strong, they (then) become old, which may
be said to be contrary to the Tao. Whatever is contrary to the Tao
soon ends.
56. 1. He who knows (the Tao) does not (care to) speak (about it); he
who is (ever ready to) speak about it does not know it.
2. He (who knows it) will keep his mouth shut and close the portals
(of his nostrils). He will blunt his sharp points and unravel the
complications of things; he will attemper his brightness, and bring
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