| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: among the evil has also ordained that there shall ever be friendship among
the good. And the beloved when he has received him into communion and
intimacy, is quite amazed at the good-will of the lover; he recognises that
the inspired friend is worth all other friends or kinsmen; they have
nothing of friendship in them worthy to be compared with his. And when
this feeling continues and he is nearer to him and embraces him, in
gymnastic exercises and at other times of meeting, then the fountain of
that stream, which Zeus when he was in love with Ganymede named Desire,
overflows upon the lover, and some enters into his soul, and some when he
is filled flows out again; and as a breeze or an echo rebounds from the
smooth rocks and returns whence it came, so does the stream of beauty,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: of Mantinea, at which Laches fell. But if Socrates was more than seventy
years of age at his trial in 399 (see Apology), he could not have been a
young man at any time after the battle of Delium.
LACHES, OR COURAGE.
by
Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE:
Lysimachus, son of Aristides.
Melesias, son of Thucydides.
Their sons.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: other. On this occasion he talked for nearly half an hour with madame
de Listomere, without any predetermined idea of pleasing her. As they
followed the caprices of conversation, which, beginning with the opera
of "Guillaume Tell," had reached the topic of the duties of women, he
looked at the marquise, more than once, in a manner that embarrassed
her; then he left her and did not speak to her again for the rest of
the evening. He danced, played at ecarte, lost some money, and went
home to bed. I have the honor to assure you that the affair happened
precisely thus. I add nothing, and I suppress nothing.
The next morning Rastignac woke late and stayed in bed, giving himself
up to one of those matutinal reveries in the course of which a young
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