| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: it is to make sheep ferocious; and tanning their skins for shoes
is not the best use to which they can be put.
When looking over a list of men's names in a foreign language, as
of military officers, or of authors who have written on a
particular subject, I am reminded once more that there is nothing
in a name. The name Menschikoff, for instance, has nothing in it
to my ears more human than a whisker, and it may belong to a rat.
As the names of the Poles and Russians are to us, so are ours to
them. It is as if they had been named by the child's
rigmarole,--IERY FIERY ICHERY VAN, TITTLE-TOL-TAN. I see in my
mind a herd of wild creatures swarming over the earth, and to
Walking |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: in Westgate Buildings, as Anne chose to be taken.
The visit was paid, their acquaintance re-established, their interest
in each other more than re-kindled. The first ten minutes
had its awkwardness and its emotion. Twelve years were gone
since they had parted, and each presented a somewhat different person
from what the other had imagined. Twelve years had changed Anne
from the blooming, silent, unformed girl of fifteen, to the elegant
little woman of seven-and-twenty, with every beauty except bloom,
and with manners as consciously right as they were invariably gentle;
and twelve years had transformed the fine-looking, well-grown Miss Hamilton,
in all the glow of health and confidence of superiority, into a poor,
Persuasion |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: knowledge, and is equally willing to learn of Socrates and of the Sophists.
He may be regarded as standing in the same relation to Gorgias as
Hippocrates in the Protagoras to the other great Sophist. He is the
sophisticated youth on whom Socrates tries his cross-examining powers, just
as in the Charmides, the Lysis, and the Euthydemus, ingenuous boyhood is
made the subject of a similar experiment. He is treated by Socrates in a
half-playful manner suited to his character; at the same time he appears
not quite to understand the process to which he is being subjected. For he
is exhibited as ignorant of the very elements of dialectics, in which the
Sophists have failed to instruct their disciple. His definition of virtue
as 'the power and desire of attaining things honourable,' like the first
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