| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious and in time despotic.
Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten
upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or of anguish.
"This, sir, is one of the dangers of solitude, which the hermit has
confessed not always to promote goodness, and the astronomer's
misery has proved to be not always propitious to wisdom."
"I will no more," said the favourite, "imagine myself the Queen of
Abyssinia. I have often spent the hours which the Princess gave to
my own disposal in adjusting ceremonies and regulating the Court; I
have repressed the pride of the powerful and granted the petitions
of the poor; I have built new palaces in more happy situations,
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: here to-day, as persons who have come from Sunium tell me that they have
left her there; and therefore to-morrow, Socrates, will be the last day of
your life.
SOCRATES: Very well, Crito; if such is the will of God, I am willing; but
my belief is that there will be a delay of a day.
CRITO: Why do you think so?
SOCRATES: I will tell you. I am to die on the day after the arrival of
the ship?
CRITO: Yes; that is what the authorities say.
SOCRATES: But I do not think that the ship will be here until to-morrow;
this I infer from a vision which I had last night, or rather only just now,
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Glinda of Oz by L. Frank Baum: sides so steep that they were like the wall of a house.
"Even my purple kitten couldn't climb 'em," remarked
Dorothy, gazing upward.
"But there is some way for the Flatheads to get down
and up again," declared Ozma; "otherwise they couldn't
make war with the Skeezers, or even meet them and
quarrel with them."
"That's so, Ozma. Let's walk around a ways; perhaps
we'll find a ladder or something."
They walked quite a distance, for it was a big
mountain, and as they circled around it and came to the
Glinda of Oz |
