| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: before, and you will prove to me that I know and have always known all
things, nothing in life would be a greater gain to me.
Answer then, he said.
Ask, I said, and I will answer.
Do you know something, Socrates, or nothing?
Something, I said.
And do you know with what you know, or with something else?
With what I know; and I suppose that you mean with my soul?
Are you not ashamed, Socrates, of asking a question when you are asked one?
Well, I said; but then what am I to do? for I will do whatever you bid;
when I do not know what you are asking, you tell me to answer nevertheless,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: gave way to him in accordance with the tacit freemasonry of the
ball-room. Lily was therefore standing alone when he reached her;
and finding the expected look in her eye, he had the satisfaction
of supposing he had kindled it. The look did indeed deepen as it
rested on him, for even in that moment of self-intoxication Lily
felt the quicker beat of life that his nearness always produced.
She read, too, in his answering gaze the delicious confirmation
of her triumph, and for the moment it seemed to her that it was
for him only she cared to be beautiful.
Selden had given her his arm without speaking. She took it in
silence, and they moved away, not toward the supper-room, but
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: from all possibility of wronging him. It was the air
and attitude of a Montoni! What could more plainly speak
the gloomy workings of a mind not wholly dead to every
sense of humanity, in its fearful review of past scenes
of guilt? Unhappy man! And the anxiousness of her spirits
directed her eyes towards his figure so repeatedly,
as to catch Miss Tilney's notice. "My father,"
she whispered, "often walks about the room in this way;
it is nothing unusual."
"So much the worse!" thought Catherine; such ill-timed
exercise was of a piece with the strange unseasonableness
Northanger Abbey |
