| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: ALCIBIADES: There is not.
SOCRATES: Nor can there be friendship, if friendship is agreement?
ALCIBIADES: Plainly not.
SOCRATES: Then women are not loved by men when they do their own work?
ALCIBIADES: I suppose not.
SOCRATES: Nor men by women when they do their own work?
ALCIBIADES: No.
SOCRATES: Nor are states well administered, when individuals do their own
work?
ALCIBIADES: I should rather think, Socrates, that the reverse is the
truth. (Compare Republic.)
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: O'er ruined fort and storied plain,
Your faithful stewards sleepless guard
The harvests of your gold and grain.
God give you joy, God give you grace
To shield the truth and smite the wrong,
To honour Virtue, Valour, Worth.
To cherish faith and foster song.
So may the lustre of your days
Outshine the deeds Firdusi sung,
Your name within a nation's prayer,
Your music on a nation's tongue.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: the Patapedia, and the Quatawamkedgwick. These are words at which
the tongue balks at first, but you soon grow used to them and learn
to take anything of five syllables with a rush, as a hunter takes a
five-barred gate, trusting to fortune that you will come down with
the accent in the right place.
For six or seven miles above Metapedia the river has a breadth of
about two hundred yards, and the valley slopes back rather gently
to the mountains on either side. There is a good deal of
cultivated land, and scattered farm-houses appear. The soil is
excellent. But it is like a pearl cast before an obstinate,
unfriendly climate. Late frosts prolong the winter. Early frosts
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