| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: pricks the aperture which is nearest, until at length the entire soul is
pierced and maddened and pained, and at the recollection of beauty is again
delighted. And from both of them together the soul is oppressed at the
strangeness of her condition, and is in a great strait and excitement, and
in her madness can neither sleep by night nor abide in her place by day.
And wherever she thinks that she will behold the beautiful one, thither in
her desire she runs. And when she has seen him, and bathed herself in the
waters of beauty, her constraint is loosened, and she is refreshed, and has
no more pangs and pains; and this is the sweetest of all pleasures at the
time, and is the reason why the soul of the lover will never forsake his
beautiful one, whom he esteems above all; he has forgotten mother and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: definition.
SOCRATES: Then now we have to consider, What is money? Or else later on
we shall be found to differ about the question. For instance, the
Carthaginians use money of this sort. Something which is about the size of
a stater is tied up in a small piece of leather: what it is, no one knows
but the makers. A seal is next set upon the leather, which then passes
into circulation, and he who has the largest number of such pieces is
esteemed the richest and best off. And yet if any one among us had a mass
of such coins he would be no wealthier than if he had so many pebbles from
the mountain. At Lacedaemon, again, they use iron by weight which has been
rendered useless: and he who has the greatest mass of such iron is thought
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: - crisp, fresh, dewy, fragrant, pungent - "
"'What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle - '
- GIT up, you old cow! stumbling like that when we've just been
praising you! out on a scout and can't live up to the honor any
better than that? Antonio, how long have you been out here in the
Plains and the Rockies?"
"More than thirteen years."
"It's a long time. Don't you ever get homesick?"
"Not till now."
"Why NOW? - after such a long cure."
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