| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: yourself, now any more than of old.
Ctesippus said: Men of Chios, Thurii, or however and whatever you call
yourselves, I wonder at you, for you seem to have no objection to talking
nonsense.
Fearing that there would be high words, I again endeavoured to soothe
Ctesippus, and said to him: To you, Ctesippus, I must repeat what I said
before to Cleinias--that you do not understand the ways of these
philosophers from abroad. They are not serious, but, like the Egyptian
wizard, Proteus, they take different forms and deceive us by their
enchantments: and let us, like Menelaus, refuse to let them go until they
show themselves to us in earnest. When they begin to be in earnest their
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde: miserable, Lady Windermere. You must tell me what I did. [Sits
down at table L.]
LADY WINDERMERE. Well, you kept paying me elaborate compliments
the whole evening.
LORD DARLINGTON. [Smiling.] Ah, nowadays we are all of us so hard
up, that the only pleasant things to pay ARE compliments. They're
the only things we CAN pay.
LADY WINDERMERE. [Shaking her head.] No, I am talking very
seriously. You mustn't laugh, I am quite serious. I don't like
compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing
a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: the follower, if not the disciple, both of Socrates and of the Sophists.
In the argument he is not unfair, if allowance is made for a slight
rhetorical tendency, and for a natural desire to save his reputation with
the company; he is sometimes nearer the truth than Socrates. Nothing in
his language or behaviour is unbecoming the guardian of the beautiful
Charmides. His love of reputation is characteristically Greek, and
contrasts with the humility of Socrates. Nor in Charmides himself do we
find any resemblance to the Charmides of history, except, perhaps, the
modest and retiring nature which, according to Xenophon, at one time of his
life prevented him from speaking in the Assembly (Mem.); and we are
surprised to hear that, like Critias, he afterwards became one of the
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