| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest: Yet why should table manners stay
Those tongues that have so much to say?
At many a table I have been
Where wealth and luxury were seen,
And I have dined in halls of pride
Where all the guests were dignified;
But when it comes to pleasure rare
The perfect dinner table's where
No stranger's face is ever known:
The dinner hour we spend alone,
When little girl and little lad
A Heap O' Livin' |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: plenty of wood, if he never worked?
Certainly not, he said.
And if a person had wealth and all the goods of which we were just now
speaking, and did not use them, would he be happy because he possessed
them?
No indeed, Socrates.
Then, I said, a man who would be happy must not only have the good things,
but he must also use them; there is no advantage in merely having them?
True.
Well, Cleinias, but if you have the use as well as the possession of good
things, is that sufficient to confer happiness?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: had gone on their way, leaving the Boeotians, whom they were aiding, on the
third day after the battle of Tanagra, our countrymen conquered at
Oenophyta, and righteously restored those who had been unrighteously
exiled. And they were the first after the Persian war who fought on behalf
of liberty in aid of Hellenes against Hellenes; they were brave men, and
freed those whom they aided, and were the first too who were honourably
interred in this sepulchre by the state. Afterwards there was a mighty
war, in which all the Hellenes joined, and devastated our country, which
was very ungrateful of them; and our countrymen, after defeating them in a
naval engagement and taking their leaders, the Spartans, at Sphagia, when
they might have destroyed them, spared their lives, and gave them back, and
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