| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: moment, and when he fell back I really thought
that he would die there and then. I called to the
Bengali dispenser, and hastened away from the
room.
Next day he upset me thoroughly by renewing
his entreaties. I returned an evasive answer, and
left him the picture of ghastly despair. The day
after I went in with reluctance, and he attacked me
at once in a much stronger voice and with an
abundance of argument which was quite startling.
He presented his case with a sort of crazy vigour,
The Shadow Line |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: necessities of childhood.
"I have had a quarrel here at the table d'hote about the
newspapers and my opinions. I was unsuspiciously eating my dinner
next to a man with a gray hat who was reading the 'Debats.' I said
to myself, 'Now for my rostrum eloquence. He is tied to the
dynasty; I'll cook him; this triumph will be capital practice for
my ministerial talents.' So I went to work and praised his
'Debats.' Hein! if I didn't lead him along! Thread by thread, I
began to net my man. I launched my four-horse phrases, and the F-
sharp arguments, and all the rest of the cursed stuff. Everybody
listened; and I saw a man who had July as plain as day on his
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: several different forms, not merely an earlier and a later one, in the
various Dialogues. They are personal and impersonal, ideals and ideas,
existing by participation or by imitation, one and many, in different parts
of his writings or even in the same passage. They are the universal
definitions of Socrates, and at the same time 'of more than mortal
knowledge' (Rep.). But they are always the negations of sense, of matter,
of generation, of the particular: they are always the subjects of
knowledge and not of opinion; and they tend, not to diversity, but to
unity. Other entities or intelligences are akin to them, but not the same
with them, such as mind, measure, limit, eternity, essence (Philebus;
Timaeus): these and similar terms appear to express the same truths from a
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