The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: health or disease is the more terrible to a man? Had not many a man better
never get up from a sick bed? I should like to know whether you think that
life is always better than death. May not death often be the better of the
two?
LACHES: Yes certainly so in my opinion.
NICIAS: And do you think that the same things are terrible to those who
had better die, and to those who had better live?
LACHES: Certainly not.
NICIAS: And do you suppose that the physician or any other artist knows
this, or any one indeed, except he who is skilled in the grounds of fear
and hope? And him I call the courageous.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: family friend, the director of their business, and, to a
degree elsewhere unknown in modern days, their king.
For some reason, Kelmar always shook his head at the mention
of Pine Flat, and for some days I thought he disapproved of
the whole scheme and was proportionately sad. One fine
morning, however, he met me, wreathed in smiles. He had
found the very place for me - Silverado, another old mining
town, right up the mountain. Rufe Hanson, the hunter, could
take care of us - fine people the Hansons; we should be close
to the Toll House, where the Lakeport stage called daily; it
was the best place for my health, besides. Rufe had been
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: angry venture to say of myself, that I am as capable as any one of
devising and explaining a sound policy."--Jowett.
Now I admit the language about fathers and the rest of a man's
relations. I can go further, and add some other sayings of his, that
"when the soul (which is alone the indwelling centre of intelligence)
is gone out of a man, be he our nearest and dearest friend, we carry
the body forth and bury it out of sight." "Even in life," he used to
say, "each of us is ready to part with any portion of his best
possession--to wit, his own body--if it be useless and unprofitable.
He will remove it himself, or suffer another to do so in his stead.
Thus men cut off their own nails, hair, or corns; they allow surgeons
The Memorabilia |