| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: consequence. For a man may be thought wise; but the Athenians, I suspect,
do not much trouble themselves about him until he begins to impart his
wisdom to others, and then for some reason or other, perhaps, as you say,
from jealousy, they are angry.
EUTHYPHRO: I am never likely to try their temper in this way.
SOCRATES: I dare say not, for you are reserved in your behaviour, and
seldom impart your wisdom. But I have a benevolent habit of pouring out
myself to everybody, and would even pay for a listener, and I am afraid
that the Athenians may think me too talkative. Now if, as I was saying,
they would only laugh at me, as you say that they laugh at you, the time
might pass gaily enough in the court; but perhaps they may be in earnest,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: was going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower
edge of the red disk rested on the high fields against the horizon,
a great black figure suddenly appeared on the face of the sun.
We sprang to our feet, straining our eyes toward it. In a moment
we realized what it was. On some upland farm, a plough had been
left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it.
Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out
against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disk;
the handles, the tongue, the share--black against the molten red.
There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun.
Even while we whispered about it, our vision disappeared; the ball
My Antonia |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: and unsuspected power.
This young man held in his hand a sceptre more powerful than that of
modern kings, almost all of whom are curbed in their least wishes by
the laws. De Marsay exercised the autocratic power of an Oriental
despot. But this power, so stupidly put into execution in Asia by
brutish men, was increased tenfold by its conjunction with European
intelligence, with French wit--the most subtle, the keenest of all
intellectual instruments. Henri could do what he would in the interest
of his pleasures and vanities. This invisible action upon the social
world had invested him with a real, but secret, majesty, without
emphasis and deriving from himself. He had not the opinion which Louis
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
