| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: indeed that there is a mistake, and that I must be a bad enquirer, for
wisdom or temperance I believe to be really a great good; and happy are
you, Charmides, if you certainly possess it. Wherefore examine yourself,
and see whether you have this gift and can do without the charm; for if you
can, I would rather advise you to regard me simply as a fool who is never
able to reason out anything; and to rest assured that the more wise and
temperate you are, the happier you will be.
Charmides said: I am sure that I do not know, Socrates, whether I have or
have not this gift of wisdom and temperance; for how can I know whether I
have a thing, of which even you and Critias are, as you say, unable to
discover the nature?--(not that I believe you.) And further, I am sure,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: protests, positive orders, and even struggles, as Valery
afterward related to me. 'How could I,' he remonstrated with
her, 'go to meet the blessed soul of my late master if I let any
harm come to you while there's a spark of life left in my body?'
When they reached home at last the poor old man was stiff and
speechless from exposure, and the coachman was in not much better
plight, though he had the strength to drive round to the stables
himself. To my reproaches for venturing out at all in such
weather, she answered, characteristically, that she could not
bear the thought of abandoning me to my cheerless solitude. It
is incomprehensible how it was that she was allowed to start. I
A Personal Record |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: it strange. How would she explain to herself his sudden,
precipitate journey to London alone? Might she not quite
naturally put an unpleasant construction upon it? It
was bad enough to have to remember that they had parted
in something like a tiff; he found it much worse to be
fancying the suspicions with which she would be turning
over his mysterious absence in her mind.
He went downstairs as speedily as possible and, discovering no
overt signs of breakfast in the vicinity of the restaurant,
passed out and made his way to the Embankment.
This had been a favourite walk of his in the old days--but
The Market-Place |
