| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: souls of men, which are our habitation, with their madness; they prevent us
from coming to the birth, and are commonly the ruin of the children which
are born to us, causing them to be forgotten and unheeded; but the true and
pure pleasures, of which you spoke, know to be of our family, and also
those pleasures which accompany health and temperance, and which every
Virtue, like a goddess, has in her train to follow her about wherever she
goes,--mingle these and not the others; there would be great want of sense
in any one who desires to see a fair and perfect mixture, and to find in it
what is the highest good in man and in the universe, and to divine what is
the true form of good--there would be great want of sense in his allowing
the pleasures, which are always in the company of folly and vice, to mingle
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Voice of the City by O. Henry: Hopkins shrugged a shoulder and chewed at his
cigar, to which his teeth had clung grimly through-
out the melee.
Ten minutes and the auto turned into the open
carriage entrance of a noble mansion of brown stone,
and stood still. The chauffeur leaped out, and said:
"Come quick. The lady, she will explain. It is
the great honor you will have, monsieur. Ah, that
milady could call upon Armand to do this thing!
But, no, I am only one chauffeur."
With vehement gestures the chauffeur conducted
The Voice of the City |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: I performed the first part of my journey on horseback. I afterwards
hired a mule, as the more sure-footed and least liable to receive
injury on these rugged roads. The weather was fine; it was about
the middle of the month of August, nearly two months after the
death of Justine, that miserable epoch from which I dated all my woe.
The weight upon my spirit was sensibly lightened as I plunged yet deeper
in the ravine of Arve. The immense mountains and precipices that
overhung me on every side, the sound of the river raging among the rocks,
and the dashing of the waterfalls around spoke of a power mighty as
Omnipotence--and I ceased to fear or to bend before any being less
almighty than that which had created and ruled the elements,
Frankenstein |
