| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: numbers, whether of ships or men, to cease among them. And so the soldiers
of Marathon and the sailors of Salamis became the schoolmasters of Hellas;
the one teaching and habituating the Hellenes not to fear the barbarians at
sea, and the others not to fear them by land. Third in order, for the
number and valour of the combatants, and third in the salvation of Hellas,
I place the battle of Plataea. And now the Lacedaemonians as well as the
Athenians took part in the struggle; they were all united in this greatest
and most terrible conflict of all; wherefore their virtues will be
celebrated in times to come, as they are now celebrated by us. But at a
later period many Hellenic tribes were still on the side of the barbarians,
and there was a report that the great king was going to make a new attempt
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: and she was sentenced to penal servitude for life. Her conduct
in prison was so repentant and exemplary that she was released in
1892.
M. Proal, a distinguished French judge, and the author of some
important works on crime, acted as the examining magistrate in
the case of Vitalis and Marie Boyer. He thus sums up his
impression of the two criminals: "Here is an instance of how
greed and baseness on the one side, lust and jealousy on the
other, bring about by degrees a change in the characters of
criminals, and, after some hesitation, the suggestion and
accomplishment of parricide, Is it necessary to seek an
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: which they were able to equal but never surpass. Both were
misanthropes early in life, and practised to the end the ancient
advice that the disciple of Beyle carried upon his seal: --"Remember to distrust." And, at the same time,
both had delicate, tender hearts under this affectation of
cynicism, both were excellent sons, irreproachable friends,
indulgent masters, and both were idolized by their inferiors.
Both were worldly, yet still loved a wanderer's life; both joined
to a constant taste for luxury an irresistible desire for
solitude. Both belonged to the extreme left of the literature of
their epoch, but kept themselves from excess and used with a
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