| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: Remembering his ill-omened song, arose
Once more through all her height, and o'er him grew
Tall as a figure lengthened on the sand
When the tide ebbs in sunshine, and he said:
'O fair and strong and terrible! Lioness
That with your long locks play the Lion's mane!
But Love and Nature, these are two more terrible
And stronger. See, your foot is on our necks,
We vanquished, you the Victor of your will.
What would you more? Give her the child! remain
Orbed in your isolation: he is dead,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: intelligence?' to which Nicias replies, 'Intelligence of things terrible.'
'But every man knows the things to be dreaded in his own art.' 'No they do
not. They may predict results, but cannot tell whether they are really
terrible; only the courageous man can tell that.' Laches draws the
inference that the courageous man is either a soothsayer or a god.
Again, (2) in Nicias' way of speaking, the term 'courageous' must be denied
to animals or children, because they do not know the danger. Against this
inversion of the ordinary use of language Laches reclaims, but is in some
degree mollified by a compliment to his own courage. Still, he does not
like to see an Athenian statesman and general descending to sophistries of
this sort. Socrates resumes the argument. Courage has been defined to be
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: continued to follow over a bald turf ascent a row of stone pillars,
such as had conducted me across the Goulet. It was already warm.
I tied my jacket on the pack, and walked in my knitted waistcoat.
Modestine herself was in high spirits, and broke of her own accord,
for the first time in my experience, into a jolting trot that set
the oats swashing in the pocket of my coat. The view, back upon
the northern Gevaudan, extended with every step; scarce a tree,
scarce a house, appeared upon the fields of wild hill that ran
north, east, and west, all blue and gold in the haze and sunlight
of the morning. A multitude of little birds kept sweeping and
twittering about my path; they perched on the stone pillars, they
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