| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: my friend Damon, and Damon is always with Prodicus, who, of all the
Sophists, is considered to be the best puller to pieces of words of this
sort.
LACHES: Yes, Socrates; and the examination of such niceties is a much more
suitable employment for a Sophist than for a great statesman whom the city
chooses to preside over her.
SOCRATES: Yes, my sweet friend, but a great statesman is likely to have a
great intelligence. And I think that the view which is implied in Nicias'
definition of courage is worthy of examination.
LACHES: Then examine for yourself, Socrates.
SOCRATES: That is what I am going to do, my dear friend. Do not, however,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker: When the decadence attacks a nature naturally proud and selfish and
vain, and lacking both the aptitude and habit of self-restraint, the
development of the disease is more swift, and ranges to farther
limits. It is such persons who become inbued with the idea that
they have the attributes of the Almighty--even that they themselves
are the Almighty.
Mimi had a suspicion--or rather, perhaps, an intuition--of the true
state of things when she heard him speak, and at the same time
noticed the abnormal flush on his face, and his rolling eyes. There
was a certain want of fixedness of purpose which she had certainly
not noticed before--a quick, spasmodic utterance which belongs
Lair of the White Worm |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: but because I cannot speak of fallen women as unconcernedly as of
these chairs, I am being examined by a doctor, I am called mad,
I am pitied!"
Vassilyev for some reason felt all at once unutterably sorry for
himself, and his companions, and all the people he had seen two
days before, and for the doctor; he burst into tears and sank
into a chair.
His friends looked inquiringly at the doctor. The latter, with
the air of completely comprehending the tears and the despair, of
feeling himself a specialist in that line, went up to Vassilyev
and, without a word, gave him some medicine to drink; and then,
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
