| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: chief or principal one?
EUTHYPHRO: I have told you already, Socrates, that to learn all these
things accurately will be very tiresome. Let me simply say that piety or
holiness is learning how to please the gods in word and deed, by prayers
and sacrifices. Such piety is the salvation of families and states, just
as the impious, which is unpleasing to the gods, is their ruin and
destruction.
SOCRATES: I think that you could have answered in much fewer words the
chief question which I asked, Euthyphro, if you had chosen. But I see
plainly that you are not disposed to instruct me--clearly not: else why,
when we reached the point, did you turn aside? Had you only answered me I
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: attorney-general, expressed a wish to see the rector. Monsieur Bonnet
did not reach the palace before midnight. The Abbe Gabriel, who made
many trips between the palace and the jail, judged it necessary to
fetch the rector in the episcopal coach; for the poor priest was in a
state of exhaustion which almost deprived him of the use of his legs.
The effect of his day, the prospect of the morrow, the sight of the
secret struggle he had witnessed, and the full repentance which had at
last overtaken his stubborn lamb when the great reckoning of eternity
was brought home to him,--all these things had combined to break down
Monsieur Bonnet, whose nervous, electrical nature entered into the
sufferings of others as though they were his own. Souls that resemble
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Skipper, you're too fat to do any fightin' on that there hillside,
so you better stay here an' let one o' the men take your gun,"
for Ward knew so well the mettle of his superior that he much
preferred his absence to his presence in the face of real
fighting, and with the gun in the hands of a braver man it
would be vastly more effective.
Ward himself was no lover of a fight, but he saw now that
starvation might stare them in the face with their food gone,
and everything be lost with the loss of the girl. For food and
money a much more cowardly man than Bender Ward would
fight to the death.
The Mucker |
