| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: they were soon able to take a full survey of her face
and her frock in easy indifference.
They were a remarkably fine family, the sons very well-looking,
the daughters decidedly handsome, and all of them well-grown
and forward of their age, which produced as striking
a difference between the cousins in person, as education
had given to their address; and no one would have supposed
the girls so nearly of an age as they really were. There were
in fact but two years between the youngest and Fanny.
Julia Bertram was only twelve, and Maria but a year older.
The little visitor meanwhile was as unhappy as possible.
Mansfield Park |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pathology of Lying, Etc. by William and Mary Healy: and thought because of this he would be allowed to go home.
On many occasions this boy made voluntary appeal to us,
describing his lying as a habit which it was impossible for him
to stop, and implored aid in the breaking of it. Up to the last
that we knew of him he occasionally made the complaint to
strangers of mistreatment by his family, which in the sense in
which he put it was not true at all. The dramatic nature of his
later stories seemed to fulfill the need which the boy felt of
his being something which he was not, and very likely belonged to
the same category of behavior he displayed when he attempted to
impersonate a policeman in the middle of the night, and to pose
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: like manner applauded Themistocles, Pericles, and others, will lay hold of
you and my friend Alcibiades, and you will suffer for the misdeeds of your
predecessors. The old story is always being repeated--'after all his
services, the ungrateful city banished him, or condemned him to death.' As
if the statesman should not have taught the city better! He surely cannot
blame the state for having unjustly used him, any more than the sophist or
teacher can find fault with his pupils if they cheat him. And the sophist
and orator are in the same case; although you admire rhetoric and despise
sophistic, whereas sophistic is really the higher of the two. The teacher
of the arts takes money, but the teacher of virtue or politics takes no
money, because this is the only kind of service which makes the disciple
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