The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: made this image eternal but moving according to number, while eternity
itself rests in unity; and this image we call time. For there were no days
and nights and months and years before the heaven was created, but when he
constructed the heaven he created them also. They are all parts of time,
and the past and future are created species of time, which we unconsciously
but wrongly transfer to the eternal essence; for we say that he 'was,' he
'is,' he 'will be,' but the truth is that 'is' alone is properly attributed
to him, and that 'was' and 'will be' are only to be spoken of becoming in
time, for they are motions, but that which is immovably the same cannot
become older or younger by time, nor ever did or has become, or hereafter
will be, older or younger, nor is subject at all to any of those states
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: With her companion, and both of them sat themselves down on the low wall
Round the spring. She bent herself over, to draw out the water,
He the other pitcher took up, and bent himself over,
And in the blue of the heavens they saw their figures reflected,
Waving, and nodding, and in the mirror their greetings exchanging.
"Now let me drink," exclaim'd the youth in accents of gladness.
And she gave him the pitcher. They then, like old friends, sat together,
Leaning against the vessels, when she address'd him as follows
"Say, why find I you here without your carriage and horses,
Far from the place where first I saw you. Pray how came you hither?"
Hermann thoughtfully gazed on the ground, but presently lifted
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne: In consequence, a struggle, an attempt at flight, shots fired
which happily missed the two correspondents, but their
execution would not have been long delayed, if it had not
been for the intervention of the Emir's lieutenant.
The latter observed the prisoners for some moments,
they being absolutely unknown to him. They had been
present at that scene in the post-house at Ichim, in which
Michael Strogoff had been struck by Ogareff; but the brutal
traveler had paid no attention to the persons then collected
in the common room.
Blount and Jolivet, on the contrary, recognized him at
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