| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Othello by William Shakespeare: If she be faire, and wise: fairenesse, and wit,
The ones for vse, the other vseth it
Des. Well prais'd:
How if she be Blacke and Witty?
Iago. If she be blacke, and thereto haue a wit,
She'le find a white, that shall her blacknesse fit
Des. Worse, and worse.
Aemil. How if Faire, and Foolish?
Iago. She neuer yet was foolish that was faire,
For euen her folly helpt her to an heire
Desde. These are old fond Paradoxes, to make Fooles
 Othello |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: Now when it is so nearly over, we can afford to smile at this
extraordinary passage, though we must still sigh over the occasion
lost.
MALIE. The way to Malie lies round the shores of Faleula bay and
through a succession of pleasant groves and villages. The road,
one of the works of Brandeis, is now cut up by pig fences. Eight
times you must leap a barrier of cocoa posts; the take-off and the
landing both in a patch of mire planted with big stones, and the
stones sometimes reddened with the blood of horses that have gone
before. To make these obstacles more annoying, you have sometimes
to wait while a black boar clambers sedately over the so-called pig
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: not what justice is, and therefore I am not likely to know whether it is or
is not a virtue, nor can I say whether the just man is happy or unhappy.
BOOK II.
With these words I was thinking that I had made an end of the discussion;
but the end, in truth, proved to be only a beginning. For Glaucon, who is
always the most pugnacious of men, was dissatisfied at Thrasymachus'
retirement; he wanted to have the battle out. So he said to me: Socrates,
do you wish really to persuade us, or only to seem to have persuaded us,
that to be just is always better than to be unjust?
I should wish really to persuade you, I replied, if I could.
Then you certainly have not succeeded. Let me ask you now:--How would you
 The Republic |