| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: the wind blew free, and the sunlight with wandering hands of gold
moved the tremulous leaves aside. There were flowers, too, in the
forest, not so splendid, perhaps, as the flowers in the garden, but
more sweetly scented for all that; hyacinths in early spring that
flooded with waving purple the cool glens, and grassy knolls;
yellow primroses that nestled in little clumps round the gnarled
roots of the oak-trees; bright celandine, and blue speedwell, and
irises lilac and gold. There were grey catkins on the hazels, and
the foxgloves drooped with the weight of their dappled bee-haunted
cells. The chestnut had its spires of white stars, and the
hawthorn its pallid moons of beauty. Yes: surely she would come
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: corruption that a state or individual was demoralized in their whole
character. Not only has the corruption of the best been sometimes thought
to be the worst, but it may be remarked that this very excess of evil has
been the stimulus to good (compare Plato, Laws, where he says that in the
most corrupt cities individuals are to be found beyond all praise). (2) It
may be observed that evils which admit of degrees can seldom be rightly
estimated, because under the same name actions of the most different
degrees of culpability may be included. No charge is more easily set going
than the imputation of secret wickedness (which cannot be either proved or
disproved and often cannot be defined) when directed against a person of
whom the world, or a section of it, is predisposed to think evil. And it
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: is, I think, some sort of an altar of Boreas at the place.
PHAEDRUS: I have never noticed it; but I beseech you to tell me, Socrates,
do you believe this tale?
SOCRATES: The wise are doubtful, and I should not be singular if, like
them, I too doubted. I might have a rational explanation that Orithyia was
playing with Pharmacia, when a northern gust carried her over the
neighbouring rocks; and this being the manner of her death, she was said to
have been carried away by Boreas. There is a discrepancy, however, about
the locality; according to another version of the story she was taken from
Areopagus, and not from this place. Now I quite acknowledge that these
allegories are very nice, but he is not to be envied who has to invent
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