| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: abounded in the praises of my grandfather, encouraged me (in
the most admirable manner) to pursue his footprints, and left
impressed for ever on my memory the image of his own
Bardolphian nose. He died not long after.
The engineer was not only exposed to the hazards of the
sea; he must often ford his way by land to remote and scarce
accessible places, beyond reach of the mail or the post-
chaise, beyond even the tracery of the bridle-path, and guided
by natives across bog and heather. Up to 1807 my grand-father
seems to have travelled much on horseback; but he then gave up
the idea - `such,' he writes with characteristic emphasis and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: Their eristic, or rather Socratic character; they belong to the class
called dialogues of search (Greek), which have no conclusion. (iii) The
absence in them of certain favourite notions of Plato, such as the doctrine
of recollection and of the Platonic ideas; the questions, whether virtue
can be taught; whether the virtues are one or many. (iv) They have a want
of depth, when compared with the dialogues of the middle and later period;
and a youthful beauty and grace which is wanting in the later ones. (v)
Their resemblance to one another; in all the three boyhood has a great
part. These reasons have various degrees of weight in determining their
place in the catalogue of the Platonic writings, though they are not
conclusive. No arrangement of the Platonic dialogues can be strictly
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: moments. Most of them didn't, anyhow. They were properly
brought up, and sat still and straight, and took the luck fate
brought them as gentlewomen should. And they had an idea of what
men were like behind all their nicety. They knew they were all
Bogey in disguise. I didn't! I didn't! After all--"
For a time her mind ran on daintiness and its defensive
restraints as though it was the one desirable thing. That world
of fine printed cambrics and escorted maidens, of delicate
secondary meanings and refined allusiveness, presented itself to
her imagination with the brightness of a lost paradise, as indeed
for many women it is a lost paradise.
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