| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: paragraphs are more precise and definite--they do not run into one another.
They are also more regularly developed from within. The sentence marks
another step in an argument or a narrative or a statement; in reading a
paragraph we silently turn over the page and arrive at some new view or
aspect of the subject. Whereas in Plato we are not always certain where a
sentence begins and ends; and paragraphs are few and far between. The
language is distributed in a different way, and less articulated than in
English. For it was long before the true use of the period was attained by
the classical writers both in poetry or prose; it was (Greek). The balance
of sentences and the introduction of paragraphs at suitable intervals must
not be neglected if the harmony of the English language is to be preserved.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: Hung in the burning east: see, the red rim
O'ertops the expectant hills! it is the God! for love of him
Already the shrill lark is out of sight,
Flooding with waves of song this silent dell, -
Ah! there is something more in that bird's flight
Than could be tested in a crucible! -
But the air freshens, let us go, why soon
The woodmen will be here; how we have lived this night of June!
Poem: Requiescat
Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: attitude to life was determined by the difference of the ways in
which they turned their backs on their unfulfilled dreams.
Nikolái quenched his ardor in skeptical derision, Lyoff
renounced his unrealized dreams with silent reproach, and
Sergéi with morbid misanthropy. The greater the original
store of love in such characters, the stronger, if only for a time,
is their resemblance to Timon of Athens.
In the winter of 1901-02 my father was ill in the Crimea, and for
a long time lay between life and death. Uncle Seryózha, who
felt himself getting weaker, could not bring himself to leave
Pirogóvo, and in his own home followed anxiously the course
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