| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: seldom impart your wisdom. But I have a benevolent habit of pouring out
myself to everybody, and would even pay for a listener, and I am afraid
that the Athenians may think me too talkative. Now if, as I was saying,
they would only laugh at me, as you say that they laugh at you, the time
might pass gaily enough in the court; but perhaps they may be in earnest,
and then what the end will be you soothsayers only can predict.
EUTHYPHRO: I dare say that the affair will end in nothing, Socrates, and
that you will win your cause; and I think that I shall win my own.
SOCRATES: And what is your suit, Euthyphro? are you the pursuer or the
defendant?
EUTHYPHRO: I am the pursuer.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: at that Kuang Hsu, without parental restraint, and fawned upon by
cringing eunuchs and serving maids, should have been a spoiled
child; the wonder is that he was not worse than he was.
One day in 1901 while the court was absent at Hsian, and the
front gate of the Forbidden City was guarded by our "boys in
blue," I obtained a pass and visited the imperial palace. The
apartments of the Emperor consisted of a series of one-story
Chinese buildings, with paper windows around a large central pane
of glass, tile roof and brick floor. The east part of the
building appeared to be the living-room, about twenty by
twenty-five feet. The window on the south side extended the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: There was nothing else for it. He had to sit still on a small
folding stool, half smothered by the heavy coats hanging there.
We listened to the steward going into the bathroom out of
the saloon, filling the water bottles there, scrubbing the bath,
setting things to rights, whisk, bang, clatter--out again
into the saloon--turn the key--click. Such was my scheme
for keeping my second self invisible. Nothing better could
be contrived under the circumstances. And there we sat;
I at my writing desk ready to appear busy with some papers,
he behind me out of sight of the door. It would not have
been prudent to talk in daytime; and I could not have stood
The Secret Sharer |
