| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: you can: what was it but stealing? I'd bring you up in my own
house, I would.
VIVIE [quietly] In one of your own houses.
MRS WARREN [screaming] Listen to her! listen to how she spits on
her mother's grey hairs! Oh, may you live to have your own
daughter tear and trample on you as you have trampled on me. And
you will: you will. No woman ever had luck with a mother's curse
on her.
VIVIE. I wish you wouldnt rant, mother. It only hardens me.
Come: I suppose I am the only young woman you ever had in your
power that you did good to. Dont spoil it all now.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: Socrates, are problems which no critical instinct can determine.
On the other hand, the dialogue has several Platonic traits, whether
original or imitated may be uncertain. Socrates, when he departs from his
character of a 'know nothing' and delivers a speech, generally pretends
that what he is speaking is not his own composition. Thus in the Cratylus
he is run away with; in the Phaedrus he has heard somebody say something--
is inspired by the genius loci; in the Symposium he derives his wisdom from
Diotima of Mantinea, and the like. But he does not impose on Menexenus by
his dissimulation. Without violating the character of Socrates, Plato, who
knows so well how to give a hint, or some one writing in his name,
intimates clearly enough that the speech in the Menexenus like that in the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: Could we handle that dumb thing, or would it handle us?
I felt how big, how confoundedly big, was that thing that
couldn't talk, and perhaps was deaf as well. What was in there?
I could see a little ivory coming out from there, and I had heard
Mr. Kurtz was in there. I had heard enough about it, too--
God knows! Yet somehow it didn't bring any image with it--
no more than if I had been told an angel or a fiend was in there.
I believed it in the same way one of you might believe there
are inhabitants in the planet Mars. I knew once a Scotch
sailmaker who was certain, dead sure, there were people in Mars.
If you asked him for some idea how they looked and behaved,
Heart of Darkness |
