| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: could not be found under his magnificent eloquence.
Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say.
I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very last.
But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him
a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it
had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know,
things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this
great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating.
It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.
. . . I put down the glass, and the head that had appeared near
enough to be spoken to seemed at once to have leaped away from me
Heart of Darkness |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen: where the most wonderful flowers were growing. There stood white lilies with
blood-red stamina, skyblue tulips, which shone as they waved in the winds, and
apple-trees, the apples of which looked exactly like large soapbubbles: so
only think how the trees must have sparkled in the sunshine! Around the nicest
green meads, where the deer were playing in the grass, grew magnificent oaks
and beeches; and if the bark of one of the trees was cracked, there grass and
long creeping plants grew in the crevices. And there were large calm lakes
there too, in which white swans were swimming, and beat the air with their
wings. The King's Son often stood still and listened. He thought the bell
sounded from the depths of these still lakes; but then he remarked again that
the tone proceeded not from there, but farther off, from out the depths of the
Fairy Tales |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: Theb." 931; "Ag." 1575, concerning Eteocles and Polynices.
[12] See Grote, "H. G." xi. 288, xii. 6; "Hell." VI. iv. 36; Isocr.
"On the Peace," 182; Plut. "Dem. Pol." iii. (Clough, v. p. 98);
Tac. "Hist." v. 8, about the family feuds of the kings of Judaea.
[13] "It was his own familiar friend who dealt the blow, the nearest
and dearest to his heart."
How can you suppose, then, that being so hated by those whom nature
predisposes and law compels to love him, the tyrant should be loved by
any living soul beside?
IV
Again, without some moiety of faith and trust,[1] how can a man not
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