| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde: some one who really has considerable attractions left. I thought you
would have risen to some great height of self-sacrifice, Arthur. I
think you should. And the rest of your life you could spend in
contemplating your own perfections.
LORD GORING. Oh! I do that as it is. And self-sacrifice is a thing
that should be put down by law. It is so demoralising to the people
for whom one sacrifices oneself. They always go to the bad.
MRS. CHEVELEY. As if anything could demoralise Robert Chiltern! You
seem to forget that I know his real character.
LORD GORING. What you know about him is not his real character. It
was an act of folly done in his youth, dishonourable, I admit,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: of the state...
The days of Socrates are drawing to a close; the fatal ship has been seen
off Sunium, as he is informed by his aged friend and contemporary Crito,
who visits him before the dawn has broken; he himself has been warned in a
dream that on the third day he must depart. Time is precious, and Crito
has come early in order to gain his consent to a plan of escape. This can
be easily accomplished by his friends, who will incur no danger in making
the attempt to save him, but will be disgraced for ever if they allow him
to perish. He should think of his duty to his children, and not play into
the hands of his enemies. Money is already provided by Crito as well as by
Simmias and others, and he will have no difficulty in finding friends in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: expounder of the beauty and excellence of the work he selects,
seems quite unknown. Nothing can be more captious or unfair, for
instance, than the method by which Aristotle criticised the ideal
state of Plato in his ethical works, and the passages quoted by
Polybius from Timaeus show that the latter historian fully deserved
the punning name given to him. But in Polybius there is, I think,
little of that bitterness and pettiness of spirit which
characterises most other writers, and an incidental story he tells
of his relations with one of the historians whom he criticised
shows that he was a man of great courtesy and refinement of taste -
as, indeed, befitted one who had lived always in the society of
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