| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: This fellow, by some accident, was afterwards
purchased by one of Caesar's men, and became a shoemaker to
Caesar. You should have seen what respect Epaphroditus paid him
then. "How does the good Felicion? Kindly let me know!" And if
any of us inquired, "What is Epaphroditus doing?" the answer was,
"He is consulting about so and so with Felicion."-- Had he not
sold him as good-for-nothing? Who had in a trice converted him
into a wiseacre?
This is what comes of holding of importance anything but the
things that depend on the Will.
XLI
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Baby Mine by Margaret Mayo: Aggie was meditating whether she should read her young friend a
lecture on the value of patience, when the telephone began to
ring violently.
Zoie looked up from her sewing with a frown. "You answer it,
will you, Aggie?" she said. "I can't let go this thread."
"Hello," called Aggie sweetly over the 'phone; then she added in
surprise, "Is this you, Jimmy dear?" Apparently it was; and as
Zoie watched Aggie's face, with its increasing distress she
surmised that Jimmy's message was anything but "dear."
"Good heavens!" cried Aggie over the telephone, "that's awful!"
"Isn't Alfred coming?" was the first question that burst from
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: the lowlands of the Ross, the wind must have blown as fierce as on
the open sea; and God only knows the uproar that was raging around
the head of Ben Kyaw. Sheets of mingled spray and rain were driven
in our faces. All round the isle of Aros the surf, with an
incessant, hammering thunder, beat upon the reefs and beaches. Now
louder in one place, now lower in another, like the combinations of
orchestral music, the constant mass of sound was hardly varied for
a moment. And loud above all this hurly-burly I could hear the
changeful voices of the Roost and the intermittent roaring of the
Merry Men. At that hour, there flashed into my mind the reason of
the name that they were called. For the noise of them seemed
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