| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: The panther feet of Dian never tread that secret glade.
Nay if thou will'st, back to the beating brine,
Back to the boisterous billow let us go,
And walk all day beneath the hyaline
Huge vault of Neptune's watery portico,
And watch the purple monsters of the deep
Sport in ungainly play, and from his lair keen Xiphias leap.
For if my mistress find me lying here
She will not ruth or gentle pity show,
But lay her boar-spear down, and with austere
Relentless fingers string the cornel bow,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: importance it has no advantage over any one of its predecessors.
Perhaps the most celebrated turning-point recorded in
history was the crossing of the Rubicon. Suetonius says:
Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, he
halted for a while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of
the step he was on the point of taking, he turned to those about
him and said, "We may still retreat; but if we pass this little
bridge, nothing is left for us but to fight it out in arms."
This was a stupendously important moment. And all the
incidents, big and little, of Caesar's previous life had been
leading up to it, stage by stage, link by link. This was the
What is Man? |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: The Protagoras arrived at a sort of hypothetical conclusion, that if
'virtue is knowledge, it can be taught.' In the Euthydemus, Socrates
himself offered an example of the manner in which the true teacher may draw
out the mind of youth; this was in contrast to the quibbling follies of the
Sophists. In the Meno the subject is more developed; the foundations of
the enquiry are laid deeper, and the nature of knowledge is more distinctly
explained. There is a progression by antagonism of two opposite aspects of
philosophy. But at the moment when we approach nearest, the truth doubles
upon us and passes out of our reach. We seem to find that the ideal of
knowledge is irreconcilable with experience. In human life there is indeed
the profession of knowledge, but right opinion is our actual guide. There
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