| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: hospitable and generous; passionately fond of his daughter,
often thwarting her in seeming, but always yielding to her in fact.
The early attachment between Matilda and the Earl of Huntingdon
had given the baron no serious reason to interfere with her habits
and pursuits, which were so congenial to those of her lover;
and not being over-burdened with orthodoxy, that is to say,
not being seasoned with more of the salt of the spirit than was
necessary to preserve him from excommunication, confiscation,
and philotheoparoptesism,[1] he was not sorry to encourage
his daughter's choice of her confessor in brother Michael,
who had more jollity and less hypocrisy than any of his fraternity,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: things were seldom necessaries, but then they cost so little, it wasn't
worth worrying about, so the trifles increased unconsciously, and in
the shopping excursions she was no longer a passive looker-on.
But the trifles cost more than one would imagine, and when she
cast up her accounts at the end of the month the sum total rather
scared her. John was busy that month and left the bills to her, the
next month he was absent, but the third he had a grand quarterly
settling up, and Meg never forgot it. A few days before she had done
a dreadful thing, and it weighed upon her conscience. Sallie had
been buying silks, and Meg longed for a new one, just a handsome light
one for parties, her black silk was so common, and thin things for
 Little Women |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: understanding of the same things, whether future, present, or past?
NICIAS: Yes, indeed Socrates; that is my opinion.
SOCRATES: And courage, my friend, is, as you say, a knowledge of the
fearful and of the hopeful?
NICIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the fearful, and the hopeful, are admitted to be future
goods and future evils?
NICIAS: True.
SOCRATES: And the same science has to do with the same things in the
future or at any time?
NICIAS: That is true.
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