| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon: The remark was greeted with a peal of merriment.
Then Socrates, with a most serious expression of countenance:[31] You
are pleased to laugh at me. Pray, do you find it so ridiculous my
wishing to improve my health by exercise? or to enjoy my victuals
better? to sleep better? or is it the sort of exercise I set my heart
on? Not like those runners of the long race,[32] to have my legs grow
muscular and my shoulders leaner in proportion; nor like a boxer,
thickening chest and shoulders at expense of legs; but by distribution
of the toil throughout my limbs[33] I seek to give an even balance to
my body. Or are you laughing to think that I shall not in future have
to seek a partner in the training school,[34] whereby it will not be
The Symposium |
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: To some of us it has seemed highly significant that at moments
which would ordinarily be expected to bring out great emotion
Inez showed almost none. For instance, when going to an
important interview about the disposition of her case, she first
plaintively said she did not know what to say, and then
immediately began to dwell with evident pleasure upon the costume
of the person addressing her. Many normal emotions were seen
expressed, however, and many moral sentiments were undoubtedly
held, but there seemed to be curious displacements upon these
levels of her mental life; there was faulty mental
stratification. Probably the force which caused this is
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: position. I feel all the inward serenity that comes when a great
resolution has been taken, even while I hear the last growlings
of the storm. When you went out on that terrible adventure which
so drew me to you, Armand, you went from the desert to the oasis
with a good guide to show you the way. Well, I am going out of
the oasis into the desert, and you are a pitiless guide to me.
And yet you only, my friend, can understand how melancholy it is
to look back for the last time on happiness--to you, and you
only, I can make moan without a blush. If you grant my entreaty,
I shall be happy; if you are inexorable, I shall expiate the
wrong that I have done. After all, it is natural, is it not,
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