| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: MELIBOEUS
So in old age, you happy man, your fields
Will still be yours, and ample for your need!
Though, with bare stones o'erspread, the pastures all
Be choked with rushy mire, your ewes with young
By no strange fodder will be tried, nor hurt
Through taint contagious of a neighbouring flock.
Happy old man, who 'mid familiar streams
And hallowed springs, will court the cooling shade!
Here, as of old, your neighbour's bordering hedge,
That feasts with willow-flower the Hybla bees,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: have been an honor to European monarchies and to the republics whose
affairs they have directed. The world still rings with the struggle
between Pitt and Napoleon, two men who conducted the politics of their
respective countries at an age when Henri de Navarre, Richelieu,
Mazarin, Colbert, Louvois, the Prince of Orange, the Guises,
Machiavelli, in short, all the best known of our great men, coming
from the ranks or born to a throne, began to rule the State. The
Convention--that model of energy--was made up in a great measure of
young heads; no sovereign can ever forget that it was able to put
fourteen armies into the field against Europe. Its policy, fatal in
the eyes of those who cling to what is called absolute power, was
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: knowledge which is gained from teachers, and make them wise in that, but do
nothing towards improving them in the virtues which distinguish themselves?
And here, Socrates, I will leave the apologue and resume the argument.
Please to consider: Is there or is there not some one quality of which all
the citizens must be partakers, if there is to be a city at all? In the
answer to this question is contained the only solution of your difficulty;
there is no other. For if there be any such quality, and this quality or
unity is not the art of the carpenter, or the smith, or the potter, but
justice and temperance and holiness and, in a word, manly virtue--if this
is the quality of which all men must be partakers, and which is the very
condition of their learning or doing anything else, and if he who is
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