| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: pecuniary obligations; these more often mar than make a friendship. It is
most likely to be permanent when the two friends are equal and independent,
or when they are engaged together in some common work or have some public
interest in common. It exists among the bad or inferior sort of men almost
as much as among the good; the bad and good, and 'the neither bad nor
good,' are drawn together in a strange manner by personal attachment. The
essence of it is loyalty, without which it would cease to be friendship.
Another question 9) may be raised, whether friendship can safely exist
between young persons of different sexes, not connected by ties of
relationship, and without the thought of love or marriage; whether, again,
a wife or a husband should have any intimate friend, besides his or her
Lysis |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: into a net, turning over once on the way as nice as you please.
"De Ville had a quick temper, as quick as his hand, and his hand was as quick
as the paw of a tiger. One day, because the ring-master called him a
frog-eater, or something like that and maybe a little worse, he shoved him
against the soft pine background he used in his knife-throwing act, so quick
the ring-master didn't have time to think, and there, before the audience, De
Ville kept the air on fire with his knives, sinking them into the wood all
around the ring-master so close that they passed through his clothes and most
of them bit into his skin.
"The clowns had to pull the knives out to get him loose, for he was pinned
fast. So the word went around to watch out for De Ville, and no one dared be
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: and freezing air" in which I complained that he had taught
himself to breathe. Reading the man through the books, I
took his professions in good faith. He made a dupe of me,
even as he was seeking to make a dupe of himself, wresting
philosophy to the needs of his own sorrow. But in the light
of this new fact, those pages, seemingly so cold, are seen to
be alive with feeling. What appeared to be a lack of
interest in the philosopher turns out to have been a touching
insincerity of the man to his own heart; and that fine-spun
airy theory of friendship, so devoid, as I complained, of any
quality of flesh and blood, a mere anodyne to lull his pains.
|
