| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: the Dialogue, when Socrates is arguing that 'pleasure is the only good,'
Protagoras deems it more in accordance with his character to maintain that
'some pleasures only are good;' and admits that 'he, above all other men,
is bound to say "that wisdom and knowledge are the highest of human
things."'
There is no reason to suppose that in all this Plato is depicting an
imaginary Protagoras; he seems to be showing us the teaching of the
Sophists under the milder aspect under which he once regarded them. Nor is
there any reason to doubt that Socrates is equally an historical character,
paradoxical, ironical, tiresome, but seeking for the unity of virtue and
knowledge as for a precious treasure; willing to rest this even on a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: nerves, a night passed without sleep, two minutes
opposite the muzzle of a pistol, and an empty
stomach.
It is all for the best. That new suffering
created within me a fortunate diversion -- to speak
in military style. To weep is healthy, and then,
no doubt, if I had not ridden as I did and had
not been obliged to walk fifteen versts on my way
back, sleep would not have closed my eyes on that
night either.
I returned to Kislovodsk at five o'clock in the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: Paris to be clerk with a color-merchant (formerly of Mayenne and a
distant connection of the Orgemonts) made himself a painter simply by
the fact of an obstinacy which constitutes the Breton character. What
he suffered, the manner in which he lived during those years of study,
God only knows. He suffered as much as great men suffer when they are
hounded by poverty and hunted like wild beasts by the pack of
commonplace minds and by troops of vanities athirst for vengeance.
As soon as he thought himself able to fly on his own wings, Fougeres
took a studio in the upper part of the rue des Martyrs, where he began
to delve his way. He made his first appearance in 1819. The first
picture he presented to the jury of the Exhibition at the Louvre
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