| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: made peace, considering that they should war with the fellow-countrymen
only until they gained a victory over them, and not because of the private
anger of the state destroy the common interest of Hellas; but that with
barbarians they should war to the death. Worthy of praise are they also
who waged this war, and are here interred; for they proved, if any one
doubted the superior prowess of the Athenians in the former war with the
barbarians, that their doubts had no foundation--showing by their victory
in the civil war with Hellas, in which they subdued the other chief state
of the Hellenes, that they could conquer single-handed those with whom they
had been allied in the war against the barbarians. After the peace there
followed a third war, which was of a terrible and desperate nature, and in
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: upon her face.
At this, I found expression. Calling by name upon the
servants, I bade them turn this woman from the house, fetch
her to the boat, and set her back upon the mainland. But
with one voice, they protested that they durst not obey,
coming close about me, pleading and beseeching me to be more
wise; and, when I insisted, rising higher in passion and
speaking of this foul intruder in the terms she had deserved,
they fell back from me as from one who had blasphemed. A
superstitious reverence plainly encircled the stranger; I
could read it in their changed demeanour, and in the paleness
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: The wish was rather eager than lasting. He was roused from
the reverie of retrospection and regret produced by it,
by some inquiry from Edmund as to his plans for the next
day's hunting; and he found it was as well to be a man
of fortune at once with horses and grooms at his command.
In one respect it was better, as it gave him the means
of conferring a kindness where he wished to oblige.
With spirits, courage, and curiosity up to anything,
William expressed an inclination to hunt; and Crawford could
mount him without the slightest inconvenience to himself,
and with only some scruples to obviate in Sir Thomas,
Mansfield Park |
