| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: works of his own to show; then he should point out to them what Athenians
or strangers, bond or free, he is generally acknowledged to have improved.
But if he can show neither teachers nor works, then he should tell them to
look out for others; and not run the risk of spoiling the children of
friends, and thereby incurring the most formidable accusation which can be
brought against any one by those nearest to him. As for myself, Lysimachus
and Melesias, I am the first to confess that I have never had a teacher of
the art of virtue; although I have always from my earliest youth desired to
have one. But I am too poor to give money to the Sophists, who are the
only professors of moral improvement; and to this day I have never been
able to discover the art myself, though I should not be surprised if Nicias
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: the finest conception of being let alone that I've ever met. For
the time, none the less, he took his profit where it seemed most to
crowd on him, having in his pocket the portable sophistries about
the nature of the artist's task. Observation too was a kind of
work and experience a kind of success; London dinners were all
material and London ladies were fruitful toil. "No one has the
faintest conception of what I'm trying for," he said to me, "and
not many have read three pages that I've written; but I must dine
with them first - they'll find out why when they've time." It was
rather rude justice perhaps; but the fatigue had the merit of being
a new sort, while the phantasmagoric town was probably after all
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare: BERTRAM.
No matter; his heels have deserved it, in usurping his
spurs so long. How does he carry himself?
FIRST LORD.
I have told your lordship already; the stocks carry him. But to
answer you as you would be understood: he weeps like a wench that
had shed her milk; he hath confessed himself to Morgan, whom he
supposes to be a friar, from the time of his remembrance to this
very instant disaster of his setting i' the stocks: and what
think you he hath confessed?
BERTRAM.
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