| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: like to hear what Cratylus has more to say.
HERMOGENES: But, Socrates, as I was telling you before, Cratylus mystifies
me; he says that there is a fitness of names, but he never explains what is
this fitness, so that I cannot tell whether his obscurity is intended or
not. Tell me now, Cratylus, here in the presence of Socrates, do you agree
in what Socrates has been saying about names, or have you something better
of your own? and if you have, tell me what your view is, and then you will
either learn of Socrates, or Socrates and I will learn of you.
CRATYLUS: Well, but surely, Hermogenes, you do not suppose that you can
learn, or I explain, any subject of importance all in a moment; at any
rate, not such a subject as language, which is, perhaps, the very greatest
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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: in the deep mass of dead leaves.
"Now, you sit there," he said. "The leaves have not
got damp as yet. Just give an eye to the horse--it
will be quite sufficient."
He took a few steps away from her, but, returning,
said, "By the bye, Tess, your father has a new cob
today. Somebody gave it to him."
"Somebody? You!"
D'Urberville nodded.
"O how very good of you that is!" she exclaimed, with a
painful sense of the awkwardness of having to thank him
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: Frenchman, discovered "actinism," that power in the sun's rays
which produces a chemical effect; that granite rocks, and stone
structures, and statues of metal "are all alike destructively
acted upon during the hours of sunshine, and, but for provisions
of Nature no less wonderful, would soon perish under the delicate
touch of the most subtle of the agencies of the universe." But he
observed that "those bodies which underwent this change during
the daylight possessed the power of restoring themselves to their
original conditions during the hours of night, when this
excitement was no longer influencing them." Hence it has been
inferred that "the hours of darkness are as necessary to the
Walking |
