| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: plural, as the facetious say of those who break a thing, but deliver virtue
to me whole and sound, and not broken into a number of pieces: I have
given you the pattern.
MENO: Well then, Socrates, virtue, as I take it, is when he, who desires
the honourable, is able to provide it for himself; so the poet says, and I
say too--
'Virtue is the desire of things honourable and the power of attaining
them.'
SOCRATES: And does he who desires the honourable also desire the good?
MENO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then are there some who desire the evil and others who desire
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: "Ohe, Titi, oheee! Here comes the bobby, here comes the p'lice,
pick up your duds and be off, through the sewer with you!"
Sometimes this gnat--that is what he calls himself--knows how to read;
sometimes he knows how to write; he always knows how to daub.
He does not hesitate to acquire, by no one knows what mysterious
mutual instruction, all the talents which can be of use to the public;
from 1815 to 1830, he imitated the cry of the turkey; from 1830
to 1848, he scrawled pears on the walls. One summer evening,
when Louis Philippe was returning home on foot, he saw a little fellow,
no higher than his knee, perspiring and climbing up to draw a gigantic
pear in charcoal on one of the pillars of the gate of Neuilly;
Les Miserables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: She turned away in silence; but something in her expression,
in his feeling at the time, in the situation, incited Longueville
to higher play. He felt a lively need of carrying his point.
"You see it will be pure kindness," he went on,--"a simple act of charity.
Five minutes will be enough. Treat me as an Italian beggar."
She had laid down his sketch and had stepped forward.
He stood there, obsequious, clasping his hands and smiling.
His interruptress stopped and looked at him again, as if she thought
him a very odd person; but she seemed amused. Now, at any rate,
she was not frightened. She seemed even disposed to provoke him
a little.
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