| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: found! I wish that you would favour me with the exhibition which you have
been making to the rest of the company, and then I shall be able to judge
whether you know what a lover ought to say about his love, either to the
youth himself, or to others.
Nay, Socrates, he said; you surely do not attach any importance to what he
is saying.
Do you mean, I said, that you disown the love of the person whom he says
that you love?
No; but I deny that I make verses or address compositions to him.
He is not in his right mind, said Ctesippus; he is talking nonsense, and is
stark mad.
Lysis |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: fifty feet above I turned her nose once more into the horizontal
plane and headed her again for the black mouth of the shaft.
The collision had retarded our progress and now a hundred
swift scouts were close upon us. Xodar had told me
that ascending the shaft by virtue of our repulsive rays alone
would give our enemies their best chance to overtake us,
since our propellers would be idle and in rising we would be
outclassed by many of our pursuers. The swifter craft are
seldom equipped with large buoyancy tanks, since the added
bulk of them tends to reduce a vessel's speed.
As many boats were now quite close to us it was inevitable
The Gods of Mars |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: place where no one can answer: 'There is a girl with a golden gaze
here, who has long hair.' Yonder I will give thee as many pleasures as
thou wouldst have of me. Then when you love me no longer, you shall
leave me, I shall not complain, I shall say nothing; and your
desertion need cause you no remorse, for one day passed with you, only
one day, in which I have had you before my eyes, will be worth all my
life to me. But if I stay here, I am lost."
"I cannot leave Paris, little one!" replied Henri. "I do not belong to
myself, I am bound by a vow to the fortune of several persons who
stand to me, as I do to them. But I can place you in a refuge in
Paris, where no human power can reach you."
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
