| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Apology by Xenophon: instance answered: "What! do I not seem to you to have spent my whole
life in meditating my defence?" And when Hermogenes asked him, "How?"
he added: "By a lifelong persistence in doing nothing wrong, and that
I take to be the finest practice for his defence which a man could
devise." Presently reverting to the topic, Hermogenes demanded: "Do
you not see, SOcrates, how often Athenian juries[8] are constrained by
arguments to put quite innocent people to death, and not less often to
acquit the guilty, either through some touch of pity excited by the
pleadings, or that the defendant had skill to turn some charming
phrase?" Thus appealed to, Socrates replied: "Nay, solemnly I tell
you, twice already I have essayed to consider my defence, and twice
The Apology |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: of the Middle Ages:--
"Where, think you, may a man find these fruitful truths if not in the
heart of God Himself?--What am I?--The humble interpreter of a single
line left to us by the greatest of the Apostles--a single line out of
thousands all equally full of light. Before us, Saint Paul said, '/In
Deo vivimus movemur et sumus/.' In our day, less believing and more
learned, or better instructed and more sceptical, we should ask the
Apostle, 'To what end this perpetual motion? Whither leads this life
divided into zones? Wherefore an intelligence that begins with the
obscure perfection of marble and proceeds from sphere to sphere up to
man, up to the angel, up to God? Where is the Fount, where is the
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: line -- now what is it when you blow away the non-
sense and come down to the cold facts? It's just a
corner in pork, that's all, and you can't make anything
else out of it. You're rich -- yes, -- suddenly rich --
for about a day, maybe a week; then somebody cor-
ners the market on YOU, and down goes your bucket-
shop; ain't that so, Sandy?"
"Whethersoever it be that my mind miscarrieth,
bewraying simple language in such sort that the words
do seem to come endlong and overthwart --"
"There's no use in beating about the bush and
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
