| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: he does not know; than which nothing, as I think, can be more irrational.
And yet, after finding us so easy and good-natured, the enquiry is still
unable to discover the truth; but mocks us to a degree, and has gone out of
its way to prove the inutility of that which we admitted only by a sort of
supposition and fiction to be the true definition of temperance or wisdom:
which result, as far as I am concerned, is not so much to be lamented, I
said. But for your sake, Charmides, I am very sorry--that you, having such
beauty and such wisdom and temperance of soul, should have no profit or
good in life from your wisdom and temperance. And still more am I grieved
about the charm which I learned with so much pain, and to so little profit,
from the Thracian, for the sake of a thing which is nothing worth. I think
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: Grandlieus. Nature, however, helps him out in his pretensions. He has
those eyes of Eastern effulgence which we demand in a poet, a delicate
charm of manner, and a vibrant voice; yet a taint of natural
charlatanism destroys the effect of nearly all these advantages; he is
a born comedian. If he puts forward his well-shaped foot, it is
because the attitude has become a habit; if he uses exclamatory terms
they are part of himself; if he poses with high dramatic action he has
made that deportment his second nature. Such defects as these are not
incompatible with a general benevolence and a certain quality of
errant and purely ideal chivalry, which distinguishes the paladin from
the knight. Canalis has not devotion enough for a Don Quixote, but he
Modeste Mignon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: ford, there came a young man to me, and inquired
if I did not wish to take the "Liberator." I told him
I did; but, just having made my escape from slavery,
I remarked that I was unable to pay for it then. I,
however, finally became a subscriber to it. The paper
came, and I read it from week to week with such
feelings as it would be quite idle for me to attempt
to describe. The paper became my meat and my
drink. My soul was set all on fire. Its sympathy for
my brethren in bonds--its scathing denunciations of
slaveholders--its faithful exposures of slavery--and its
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
