| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: teach. The thing which is most necessary of all, the knowledge of human
nature, is hardly if at all considered by them. The true rules of
composition, which are very few, are not to be found in their voluminous
systems. Their pretentiousness, their omniscience, their large fortunes,
their impatience of argument, their indifference to first principles, their
stupidity, their progresses through Hellas accompanied by a troop of their
disciples--these things were very distasteful to Plato, who esteemed genius
far above art, and was quite sensible of the interval which separated them
(Phaedrus). It is the interval which separates Sophists and rhetoricians
from ancient famous men and women such as Homer and Hesiod, Anacreon and
Sappho, Aeschylus and Sophocles; and the Platonic Socrates is afraid that,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: cries, shiverings, convulsions and tossings about, like a newly-caught
fish on the grass, giving little Ah! Ah's! in default of other words;
and as often as the request was made by her, so often was it complied
with by the advocate, who dropped of to sleep at last, like an empty
pocket. But before finishing, the lover who wished to preserve a
souvenir of this sweet night of love, by a dextrous turn, plucked out
one of his wife's hairs, where from I know not, seeing I was not
there, and kept in his hand this precious gauge of the warm virtue of
that lovely creature. Towards the morning, when the cock crew, the
wife slipped in beside her husband, and pretended to sleep. Then the
maid tapped gently on the happy man's forehead, whispering in his ear,
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: apparently shut up within itself, I have managed to work my
way into all the concerns and secrets of the place.
Little Britain may truly be called the heart's core of the city;
the stronghold of true John Bullism. It is a fragment of
London as it was in its better days, with its antiquated folks
and fashions. Here flourish in great preservation many of the
holiday games and customs of yore. The inhabitants most
religiously eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, hot-cross-buns on
Good Friday, and roast goose at Michaelmas; they send love-
letters on Valentine's Day, burn the pope on the fifth of
November, and kiss all the girls under the mistletoe at
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