| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Yates Pride by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: apparent effort. An ancient India shawl was draped about her
sloping shoulders.
Eudora, as she passed the Glynn house, turned her face slightly,
so that its pure oval was evident. She was now a beauty in late
middle life. Her hair, of an indeterminate shade, swept in soft
shadows over her ears; her features were regular; her expression
was at once regal and gentle. A charm which was neither of youth
nor of age reigned in her face; her grace had surmounted with
triumphant ease the slope of every year. Eudora passed out of
sight with the baby-carriage, lifting her proud lady-head under
the soft droop of the spring boughs; and her inspectors, whom she
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: look into our eyes, still less into our "motives." And to choose
for company that roguish and cheerful vice, politeness. And to
remain master of one's four virtues, courage, insight, sympathy,
and solitude. For solitude is a virtue with us, as a sublime bent
and bias to purity, which divines that in the contact of man and
man--"in society"--it must be unavoidably impure. All society
makes one somehow, somewhere, or sometime--"commonplace."
285. The greatest events and thoughts--the greatest thoughts,
however, are the greatest events--are longest in being
comprehended: the generations which are contemporary with them do
not EXPERIENCE such events--they live past them. Something
Beyond Good and Evil |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: he took the boy upon his knee.
"My son," he said to him, "you saw a great number of people
in the streets as you came here. These men are going to
behead your father. Do not forget that. Perhaps some day
they will want to make you king, instead of the Prince of
Wales, or the Duke of York, your elder brothers. But you are
not the king, my son, and can never be so while they are
alive. Swear to me, then, never to let them put a crown upon
your head unless you have a legal right to the crown. For
one day -- listen, my son -- one day, if you do so, they
will doom you to destruction, head and crown, too, and then
Twenty Years After |
