| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: to those who would wax insolent.[17] And when the season for swift
action comes, and it is imperative to expedite a force by land or sea,
at such a crisis it will not do for us to entrust the affair to easy-
goers.
[17] Or, "curb the over-proud in sap and blood."
Further than that, the man who is a tyrant must have mercenaries, and
of all the burdens which the citizens are called upon to bear there is
none more onerous than this, since nothing will induce them to believe
these people are supported by the tyrant to add to his and their
prestige,[18] but rather for the sake of his own selfishness and
greed.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: was surprising, like something against nature, inhuman.
I developed my plan in a hurried whisper.
"I shall stand in as close as I dare and then put her round.
I will presently find means to smuggle you out of here
into the sail locker, which communicates with the lobby.
But there is an opening, a sort of square for hauling the sails out,
which gives straight on the quarter-deck and which is never
closed in fine weather, so as to give air to the sails.
When the ship's way is deadened in stays and all the hands
are aft at the main braces you will have a clear road to slip
out and get overboard through the open quarter-deck port.
The Secret Sharer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: Schiller, Walter Scott, Hugo, Lamartine, Crabbe, Moore, the great
works of the 17th and 18th centuries, history, drama, and fiction,
from Astraea to Manon Lescaut, from Montaigne's Essays to Diderot,
from the Fabliaux to the Nouvelle Heloise,--in short, the thought of
three lands crowded with confused images that girlish head, august in
its cold guilelessness, its native chastity, but from which there
sprang full-armed, brilliant, sincere, and strong, an overwhelming
admiration for genius. To Modeste a new book was an event; a
masterpiece that would have horrified Madame Latournelle made her
happy,--equally unhappy if the great work did not play havoc with her
heart. A lyric instinct bubbled in that girlish soul, so full of the
Modeste Mignon |
