| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: know about them. But I am not enquiring of you who are the teachers who
will corrupt Meno (let them be, if you please, the Sophists); I only ask
you to tell him who there is in this great city who will teach him how to
become eminent in the virtues which I was just now describing. He is the
friend of your family, and you will oblige him.
ANYTUS: Why do you not tell him yourself?
SOCRATES: I have told him whom I supposed to be the teachers of these
things; but I learn from you that I am utterly at fault, and I dare say
that you are right. And now I wish that you, on your part, would tell me
to whom among the Athenians he should go. Whom would you name?
ANYTUS: Why single out individuals? Any Athenian gentleman, taken at
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: was for the sale of such and such a house--the house and lot and everything?
Yes,--and the lawyer showed him where that was all written. And it was
all perfectly regular--there were no tricks about it of any sort? They
were poor people, and this was all they had in the world, and if there
was anything wrong they would be ruined. And so Szedvilas went on,
asking one trembling question after another, while the eyes of the women
folks were fixed upon him in mute agony. They could not understand what
he was saying, but they knew that upon it their fate depended. And when
at last he had questioned until there was no more questioning to be done,
and the time came for them to make up their minds, and either close the
bargain or reject it, it was all that poor Teta Elzbieta could do to keep
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: thoughts made her sit down again.
"With a character like hers," she said, "one can't tell how she would
take a civility; better wait events."
"Ecco la," said the young girl with the black eyes, languidly.
The steps of a person coming up the narrow stairway sounded through
the studio. The words: "Here she comes!" passed from mouth to mouth,
and then the most absolute silence reigned.
To understand the importance of the ostracism imposed by the act of
Amelie Thirion, it is necessary to add that this scene took place
toward the end of the month of July, 1815. The second return of the
Bourbons had shaken many friendships which had held firm under the
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