| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: do not deny that there may be something in such an art, as Nicias asserts,
but I tell you my experience; and, as I said at first, whether this be an
art of which the advantage is so slight, or not an art at all, but only an
imposition, in either case such an acquirement is not worth having. For my
opinion is, that if the professor of this art be a coward, he will be
likely to become rash, and his character will be only more notorious; or if
he be brave, and fail ever so little, other men will be on the watch, and
he will be greatly traduced; for there is a jealousy of such pretenders;
and unless a man be pre-eminent in valour, he cannot help being ridiculous,
if he says that he has this sort of skill. Such is my judgment,
Lysimachus, of the desirableness of this art; but, as I said at first, ask
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: "Christian" life, as he called his peasant existence. The proverbs, of
which his talk was full, were for the most part not the coarse and
indecent saws soldiers employ, but those folk sayings which taken
without a context seem so insignificant, but when used appositely
suddenly acquire a significance of profound wisdom.
He would often say the exact opposite of what he had said on a
previous occasion, yet both would be right. He liked to talk and he
talked well, adorning his speech with terms of endearment and with
folk sayings which Pierre thought he invented himself, but the chief
charm of his talk lay in the fact that the commonest events- sometimes
just such as Pierre had witnessed without taking notice of them-
War and Peace |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: the passions in motion, or to have excited either
hope or fear, or zeal or malignity, sufficient to
induce any man to put his reputation in hazard,
however little he might value it, or to overpower the
love of truth, however weak might be its influence.
The casuists have very diligently distinguished lies
into their several classes, according to their various
degrees of malignity: but they have, I think,
generally omitted that which is most common, and
perhaps, not least mischievous; which, since the
moralists have not given it a name, I shall distinguish
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