| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: other thing is converted into a patient. And from all these
considerations, as I said at first, there arises a general reflection, that
there is no one self-existent thing, but everything is becoming and in
relation; and being must be altogether abolished, although from habit and
ignorance we are compelled even in this discussion to retain the use of the
term. But great philosophers tell us that we are not to allow either the
word 'something,' or 'belonging to something,' or 'to me,' or 'this,' or
'that,' or any other detaining name to be used, in the language of nature
all things are being created and destroyed, coming into being and passing
into new forms; nor can any name fix or detain them; he who attempts to fix
them is easily refuted. And this should be the way of speaking, not only
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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: required adjustment. Before I left him on that occasion we had
passed a bargain, my part of which was that I should make it my
business to take care of him. Let whoever would represent the
interest in his presence (I must have had a mystical prevision of
Mrs. Weeks Wimbush) I should represent the interest in his work -
or otherwise expressed in his absence. These two interests were in
their essence opposed; and I doubt, as youth is fleeting, if I
shall ever again know the intensity of joy with which I felt that
in so good a cause I was willing to make myself odious.
One day in Sloane Street I found myself questioning Paraday's
landlord, who had come to the door in answer to my knock. Two
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Forgive him! -- forgive me! . . God's anodyne
For human hate is pity; and the wine
That makes men wise, forgiveness. I have read
Love's message in love's murder, and I die."
And so they laid her just where she would lie, --
Under red roses. Red they bloomed and fell;
But when flushed autumn and the snows went by,
And spring came, -- lo, from every bud's green shell
Burst a white blossom. -- Can love reason why?
Horace to Leuconoe
I pray you not, Leuconoe, to pore
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