| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: more satisfactory answer to the question, 'What is piety?' 'Doing as I do,
charging a father with murder,' may be a single instance of piety, but can
hardly be regarded as a general definition.
Euthyphro replies, that 'Piety is what is dear to the gods, and impiety is
what is not dear to them.' But may there not be differences of opinion, as
among men, so also among the gods? Especially, about good and evil, which
have no fixed rule; and these are precisely the sort of differences which
give rise to quarrels. And therefore what may be dear to one god may not
be dear to another, and the same action may be both pious and impious; e.g.
your chastisement of your father, Euthyphro, may be dear or pleasing to
Zeus (who inflicted a similar chastisement on his own father), but not
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Cliff took two glasses and filled one with wine
And one with wormwood. Then, without a sign
For me to choose at all, he took the draught
Of bitterness himself, and lightly quaffed
It off, and said the other one was mine.
And when I asked him what the deuce he meant
By doing that, he only looked at me
And grinned, and said it was a way of his.
And though I know the fellow, I have spent
Long time a-wondering when I shall be
As happy as Cliff Klingenhagen is.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis: to live. I got rid of some of our property in Ten-
nessee, and took enough cash up there with me to
fix her, in a decent sort of way, for the rest of her
life, and put it in the bank. I was with her there for
ten days; then I went back home to get Aunt Lucy
Davis to help me in another effort to persuade her
to return. But when I got back North with Aunt
Lucy she had gone."
"Gone?"
"Yes, and when we returned without her to
Tennessee there was a letter telling us not to try to
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