| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: Saw how deceits were gilded in his smiling;
Knew vows were ever brokers to defiling;
Thought characters and words, merely but art,
And bastards of his foul adulterate heart.
'And long upon these terms I held my city,
Till thus he 'gan besiege me: Gentle maid,
Have of my suffering youth some feeling pity,
And be not of my holy vows afraid:
That's to you sworn, to none was ever said;
For feasts of love I have been call'd unto,
Till now did ne'er invite, nor never woo.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: free until they afterwards enslaved themselves. Whereas, to the great king
she refused to give the assistance of the state, for she could not forget
the trophies of Marathon and Salamis and Plataea; but she allowed exiles
and volunteers to assist him, and they were his salvation. And she
herself, when she was compelled, entered into the war, and built walls and
ships, and fought with the Lacedaemonians on behalf of the Parians. Now
the king fearing this city and wanting to stand aloof, when he saw the
Lacedaemonians growing weary of the war at sea, asked of us, as the price
of his alliance with us and the other allies, to give up the Hellenes in
Asia, whom the Lacedaemonians had previously handed over to him, he
thinking that we should refuse, and that then he might have a pretence for
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: [15] Or, "This is the right road to friendship--permanent and open-
handed friendship."
Theod. How then shall I create this hunger in the heart of my friends?
Soc. In the first place you must not offer or make suggestion of your
dainties to jaded appetites until satiety has ceased and starvation
cries for alms. Even then shall you make but a faint suggestion to
their want, with modest converse--like one who would fain bestow a
kindness . . . and lo! the vision fades and she is gone--until the
very pinch of hunger; for the same gifts have then a value unknown
before the moment of supreme desire.
Then Theodote: Oh why, Socrates, why are you not by my side (like the
The Memorabilia |
