| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: This time the old woman heard, and she began
to mutter:
"Hark at them plotting, and against a poor
boy too! What are you touching him for?
What has he done to you?"
I had enough of it, and went out, firmly
resolved to find the key to the riddle.
I wrapped myself up in my felt cloak and,
sitting down on a rock by the fence, gazed into
the distance. Before me stretched the sea,
agitated by the storm of the previous night, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: him as if the life of the sun had been blown out of it in a
crash. A great wave came along and washed him on shore, while
pieces of wood, iron, and the limbs of torn men were splashing
round him in the water. He managed to crawl out of the mud.
Something had hit him while he was swimming and he thought he
would die. But life stirred in him. He had a message for you. For
a long time he went on crawling under the big trees on his hands
and knees, for there is no rest for a messenger till the message
is delivered. At last he found himself on the left bank of the
creek.
And still he felt life stir in him. So he started to swim across,
The Rescue |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: of this I am positive.
I said: I also incline to believe, Protagoras, that this was the meaning
of Simonides, of which our friend Prodicus was very well aware, but he
thought that he would make fun, and try if you could maintain your thesis;
for that Simonides could never have meant the other is clearly proved by
the context, in which he says that God only has this gift. Now he cannot
surely mean to say that to be good is evil, when he afterwards proceeds to
say that God only has this gift, and that this is the attribute of him and
of no other. For if this be his meaning, Prodicus would impute to
Simonides a character of recklessness which is very unlike his countrymen.
And I should like to tell you, I said, what I imagine to be the real
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