| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: whom she has given herself must be a very great chief indeed. But to stew
in this disgusting house while Casimir scours the land in the hope of
finding one editorial open door--it's humiliating. It's changed my whole
nature. I wasn't born for poverty--I only flower among really jolly
people, and people who never are worried."
The figure of the strange man rose before her--would not be dismissed.
"That was the man for me, after all is said and done--a man without a care
--who'd give me everything I want and with whom I'd always feel that sense
of life and of being in touch with the world. I never wanted to fight--it
was thrust on me. Really, there's a fount of happiness in me, that is
drying up, little by little, in this hateful existence. I'll be dead if
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Love Songs by Sara Teasdale: Slip vaguely from my own control --
Of my own spirit let me be
In sole though feeble mastery.
III. Lessons
Unless I learn to ask no help
From any other soul but mine,
To seek no strength in waving reeds
Nor shade beneath a straggling pine;
Unless I learn to look at Grief
Unshrinking from her tear-blind eyes,
And take from Pleasure fearlessly
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: later period of his life and authorship. But in this, as in all the later
writings of Plato, there are not wanting thoughts and expressions in which
he rises to his highest level.
The plan is complicated, or rather, perhaps, the want of plan renders the
progress of the dialogue difficult to follow. A few leading ideas seem to
emerge: the relation of the one and many, the four original elements, the
kinds of pleasure, the kinds of knowledge, the scale of goods. These are
only partially connected with one another. The dialogue is not rightly
entitled 'Concerning pleasure' or 'Concerning good,' but should rather be
described as treating of the relations of pleasure and knowledge, after
they have been duly analyzed, to the good. (1) The question is asked,
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