| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: I maintain, my friends, that every one of us should seek out the best
teacher whom he can find, first for ourselves, who are greatly in need of
one, and then for the youth, regardless of expense or anything. But I
cannot advise that we remain as we are. And if any one laughs at us for
going to school at our age, I would quote to them the authority of Homer,
who says, that
'Modesty is not good for a needy man.'
Let us then, regardless of what may be said of us, make the education of
the youths our own education.
LYSIMACHUS: I like your proposal, Socrates; and as I am the oldest, I am
also the most eager to go to school with the boys. Let me beg a favour of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: We are not laughing yet at funerals.
I see him now as I could see him then,
And I see now that it was good for me,
As it was good for him, that I was quiet;
For Time's eye was on Ferguson, and the shaft
Of its inquiring hesitancy had touched him,
Or so I chose to fancy more than once
Before he told of Norcross. When the word
Of his release (he would have called it so)
Made half an inch of news, there were no tears
That are recorded. Women there may have been
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: impulse, cleared the log by a hair's breadth, and the river, with
obedient complicity, swung it broadside to the current, and bore
it off silently and rapidly between the invisible banks. And
once more Dain, at the feet of Nina, forgot the world, felt
himself carried away helpless by a great wave of supreme emotion,
by a rush of joy, pride, and desire; understood once more with
overpowering certitude that there was no life possible without
that being he held clasped in his arms with passionate strength
in a prolonged embrace.
Nina disengaged herself gently with a low laugh.
"You will overturn the boat, Dain," she whispered.
Almayer's Folly |
