| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: A letter from his friend, Captain Harville, having found him out at last,
had brought intelligence of Captain Harville's being settled
with his family at Lyme for the winter; of their being therefore,
quite unknowingly, within twenty miles of each other. Captain Harville
had never been in good health since a severe wound which he received
two years before, and Captain Wentworth's anxiety to see him
had determined him to go immediately to Lyme. He had been there
for four-and-twenty hours. His acquittal was complete,
his friendship warmly honoured, a lively interest excited for his friend,
and his description of the fine country about Lyme so feelingly attended to
by the party, that an earnest desire to see Lyme themselves,
Persuasion |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: ask which of us is or is not skilled in the art, and has or has not had a
teacher of the art.
NICIAS: Why, Socrates, is not the question whether young men ought or
ought not to learn the art of fighting in armour?
SOCRATES: Yes, Nicias; but there is also a prior question, which I may
illustrate in this way: When a person considers about applying a medicine
to the eyes, would you say that he is consulting about the medicine or
about the eyes?
NICIAS: About the eyes.
SOCRATES: And when he considers whether he shall set a bridle on a horse
and at what time, he is thinking of the horse and not of the bridle?
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: in the matter. There is another species of machine for the
wholesale manufacture of individual morality. This excellent
result is effected by societies for all manner of virtuous
purposes, with which a man has merely to connect himself,
throwing, as it were, his quota of virtue into the common stock,
and the president and directors will take care that the aggregate
amount be well applied. All these, and other wonderful
improvements in ethics, religion, and literature, being made
plain to my comprehension by the ingenious Mr. Smooth-it-away,
inspired me with a vast admiration of Vanity Fair.
It would fill a volume, in an age of pamphlets, were I to record
Mosses From An Old Manse |
