| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: law; for by nature like is akin to like, whereas law is the tyrant of
mankind, and often compels us to do many things which are against nature.
How great would be the disgrace then, if we, who know the nature of things,
and are the wisest of the Hellenes, and as such are met together in this
city, which is the metropolis of wisdom, and in the greatest and most
glorious house of this city, should have nothing to show worthy of this
height of dignity, but should only quarrel with one another like the
meanest of mankind! I do pray and advise you, Protagoras, and you,
Socrates, to agree upon a compromise. Let us be your peacemakers. And do
not you, Socrates, aim at this precise and extreme brevity in discourse, if
Protagoras objects, but loosen and let go the reins of speech, that your
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: "I put a cheerful and even insular face on the matter, for I could not
bear to see Ethel so depressed. But it was hard work for me. Some few of
my investments were evidently good; but it always seemed as if it was
into these that I had happened to put not much money, while the bulk of
my fortune was entangled in the others. Besides the usual Midsummer
faintness that overtakes the stock market, my own specialties were a good
deal more than faint. On the 20th of August I took the afternoon train to
spend my two weeks' holiday at Lenox; and during much of the journey I
gazed at the Wall Street edition of the afternoon paper that I had
purchased as I came through the Grand Central Station. Ethel and I read
it in the evening."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: I smiling credit her false-speaking tongue,
Outfacing faults in love with love's ill rest.
But wherefore says my love that she is young?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is a soothing tongue,
And age, in love, loves not to have years told.
Therefore, I'll lie with love, and love with me,
Since that our faults in love thus smother'd be.
II.
Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,
That like two spirits do suggest me still;
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