| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: NICIAS: Much rather I should say he of whom I speak; for the soothsayer
ought to know only the signs of things that are about to come to pass,
whether death or disease, or loss of property, or victory, or defeat in
war, or in any sort of contest; but to whom the suffering or not suffering
of these things will be for the best, can no more be decided by the
soothsayer than by one who is no soothsayer.
LACHES: I cannot understand what Nicias would be at, Socrates; for he
represents the courageous man as neither a soothsayer, nor a physician, nor
in any other character, unless he means to say that he is a god. My
opinion is that he does not like honestly to confess that he is talking
nonsense, but that he shuffles up and down in order to conceal the
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: by Mercy Chant.
Clare crumpled up the paper, and followed the route to
the station; reaching it, he found that there would be
no train leaving for an hour and more. He sat down to
wait, and having waited a quarter of an hour felt that
he could wait there no longer. Broken in heart and
numbed, he had nothing to hurry for; but he wished to
get out of a town which had been the scene of such an
experience, and turned to walk to the first station
onward, and let the train pick him up there.
The highway that he followed was open, and at a little
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: Contemplate me through leather--don't use the naked eye!
I'm the man with a petrified heart and biler-iron bowels!
The massacre of isolated communities is the pastime of my idle moments,
the destruction of nationalities the serious business of my life!
The boundless vastness of the great American desert is my
enclosed property, and I bury my dead on my own premises!'
He jumped up and cracked his heels together three times before he lit
(they cheered him again), and as he come down he shouted out:
'Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the pet child of
calamity's a-coming! '
Then the other one went to swelling around and blowing again--the first one--
|
