The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: "Died years ago."
"What? " said Graham, sharply.
"Years ago. Died. Years ago."
"You don't say so!" said Graham.
"I do. I do say so. He died. This Sleeper who's
woke up--they changed in the night. A poor,
drugged insensible creature. But I mustn't tell all I
know. I mustn't tell all I know."
For a little while he muttered inaudibly. His secret
was too much for him. "I don't know the ones that
put him to sleep--that was before my time--but I
 When the Sleeper Wakes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: about wrestling and the other arts?
STRANGER: Yes, my friend, and about a good many other things. In a word,
is not the art of disputation a power of disputing about all things?
THEAETETUS: Certainly; there does not seem to be much which is left out.
STRANGER: But oh! my dear youth, do you suppose this possible? for perhaps
your young eyes may see things which to our duller sight do not appear.
THEAETETUS: To what are you alluding? I do not think that I understand
your present question.
STRANGER: I ask whether anybody can understand all things.
THEAETETUS: Happy would mankind be if such a thing were possible!
SOCRATES: But how can any one who is ignorant dispute in a rational manner
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: grandfather's, the one that had ended there, and the impalpable
ashes of his long-extinct youth, afloat in the very air like
microscopic motes. She listened to everything; she was a woman who
answered intimately but who utterly didn't chatter. She scattered
abroad therefore no cloud of words; she could assent, she could
agree, above all she could encourage, without doing that. Only at
the last she went a little further than he had done himself. "And
then how do you know? You may still, after all, want to live
here." It rather indeed pulled him up, for it wasn't what he had
been thinking, at least in her sense of the words, "You mean I may
decide to stay on for the sake of it?"
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