| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: YOUNG SOCRATES: No other.
STRANGER: The art of the general is only ministerial, and therefore not
political?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Exactly.
STRANGER: Once more let us consider the nature of the righteous judge.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good.
STRANGER: Does he do anything but decide the dealings of men with one
another to be just or unjust in accordance with the standard which he
receives from the king and legislator,--showing his own peculiar virtue
only in this, that he is not perverted by gifts, or fears, or pity, or by
any sort of favour or enmity, into deciding the suits of men with one
Statesman |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: with all his schemes and words and ways.
In going hither and thither he observed in the
outskirts of a small town a red-and-blue placard
setting forth the great advantages of the Empire of
Brazil as a field for the emigrating agriculturist.
Land was offered there on exceptionally advantageous
terms. Brazil somewhat attracted him as a new idea.
Tess could eventually join him there, and perhaps in
that country of contrasting scenes and notions and
habits the conventions would not be so operative which
made life with her seem impracticable to him here.
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: winds and sparkles between meadows in graceful curves--a beautiful
landscape, one of those scenes to which the keen emotions of early
youth or of love lend such a charm, that it is wise never to see them
again in later years--Louis Lambert said to me, "Why, I saw this last
night in a dream."
He recognized the clump of trees under which we were standing, the
grouping of the woods, the color of the water, the turrets of the
chateau, the details, the distance, in fact every part of the prospect
which we looked on for the first time. We were mere children; I, at
any rate, who was but thirteen; Louis, at fifteen, might have the
precocity of genius, but at that time we were incapable of falsehood
Louis Lambert |
