| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: remarkable. Men about town are women's favourites--that's the
postulate--and superficial people don't think far enough to see
that there may be reserved, lonely exceptions.'
'Are you proud of it, Harry?'
'No, indeed. Of late years I have wished I had gone my ways and
trod out my measure like lighter-hearted men. I have thought of
how many happy experiences I may have lost through never going to
woo.'
'Then why did you hold aloof?'
'I cannot say. I don't think it was my nature to: circumstance
hindered me, perhaps. I have regretted it for another reason.
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: sapling. In other words, the nation grew up to man's estate, keeping
the mind of its childhood.
What is thus true of the Japanese is true likewise of the Koreans
and of the Chinese. The three peoples, indeed, form so many links in
one long chain of borrowing. China took from India, then Korea
copied China, and lastly Japan imitated Korea. In this simple manner
they successively became possessed of a civilization which originally
was not the property of any one of them. In the eagerness they all
evinced in purloining what was not theirs, and in the perfect
content with which they then proceeded to enjoy what they had taken,
they remind us forcibly of that happy-go-lucky class in the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: rule others?
CALLICLES: What do you mean by his 'ruling over himself'?
SOCRATES: A simple thing enough; just what is commonly said, that a man
should be temperate and master of himself, and ruler of his own pleasures
and passions.
CALLICLES: What innocence! you mean those fools,--the temperate?
SOCRATES: Certainly:--any one may know that to be my meaning.
CALLICLES: Quite so, Socrates; and they are really fools, for how can a
man be happy who is the servant of anything? On the contrary, I plainly
assert, that he who would truly live ought to allow his desires to wax to
the uttermost, and not to chastise them; but when they have grown to their
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