| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson: He must not pass uncared for. Wherefore, rise,
O Gawain, and ride forth and find the knight.
Wounded and wearied needs must he be near.
I charge you that you get at once to horse.
And, knights and kings, there breathes not one of you
Will deem this prize of ours is rashly given:
His prowess was too wondrous. We will do him
No customary honour: since the knight
Came not to us, of us to claim the prize,
Ourselves will send it after. Rise and take
This diamond, and deliver it, and return,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: as follows:--
Either we know or do not know a thing (for the intermediate processes of
learning and forgetting need not at present be considered); and in thinking
or having an opinion, we must either know or not know that which we think,
and we cannot know and be ignorant at the same time; we cannot confuse one
thing which we do not know, with another thing which we do not know; nor
can we think that which we do not know to be that which we know, or that
which we know to be that which we do not know. And what other case is
conceivable, upon the supposition that we either know or do not know all
things? Let us try another answer in the sphere of being: 'When a man
thinks, and thinks that which is not.' But would this hold in any parallel
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: XIII., of secret documents relating to the death of Henri IV.
Catherine de' Medici, on the contrary, saved the crown of France; she
maintained the royal authority in the midst of circumstances under
which more than one great prince would have succumbed. Having to make
head against factions and ambitions like those of the Guises and the
house of Bourbon, against men such as the two Cardinals of Lorraine,
the two Balafres, and the two Condes, against the queen Jeanne
d'Albret, Henri IV., the Connetable de Montmorency, Calvin, the three
Colignys, Theodore de Beze, she needed to possess and to display the
rare qualities and precious gifts of a statesman under the mocking
fire of the Calvinist press.
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