| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: injure a better than himself. I do not deny that Anytus may, perhaps, kill
him, or drive him into exile, or deprive him of civil rights; and he may
imagine, and others may imagine, that he is inflicting a great injury upon
him: but there I do not agree. For the evil of doing as he is doing--the
evil of unjustly taking away the life of another--is greater far.
And now, Athenians, I am not going to argue for my own sake, as you may
think, but for yours, that you may not sin against the God by condemning
me, who am his gift to you. For if you kill me you will not easily find a
successor to me, who, if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a
sort of gadfly, given to the state by God; and the state is a great and
noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: else in Muller's mentality, and now and then it brings him into
conflict with the department, ... or with his own better nature.
Sometimes his unerring instinct discovers secrets in high places,
secrets which the Police Department is bidden to hush up and leave
untouched. Muller is then taken off the case, and left idle for
a while if he persists in his opinion as to the true facts. And
at other times, Muller's own warm heart gets him into trouble. He
will track down his victim, driven by the power in his soul which
is stronger than all volition; but when he has this victim in the
net, he will sometimes discover him to be a much finer, better man
than the other individual, whose wrong at this particular criminal's
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: I noticed the dancing light in the dark west much closer to the
shore now. Its motion had altered. It swayed slowly as it ran
towards us, and, suddenly, the darker shadow as of a great pointed
wing appeared gliding in the night. Under it a human voice shouted
something confidently.
"Bueno," muttered Dominic. From some receptacle I didn't see he
poured a lot of water on the blaze, like a magician at the end of a
successful incantation that had called out a shadow and a voice
from the immense space of the sea. And his hooded figure vanished
from my sight in a great hiss and the warm feel of ascending steam.
"That's all over," he said, "and now we go back for more work, more
 The Arrow of Gold |