| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: hopelessly drunk, I would have sworn as well as spoken to the influence
which they have always had and still have over me. For my heart leaps
within me more than that of any Corybantian reveller, and my eyes rain
tears when I hear them. And I observe that many others are affected in the
same manner. I have heard Pericles and other great orators, and I thought
that they spoke well, but I never had any similar feeling; my soul was not
stirred by them, nor was I angry at the thought of my own slavish state.
But this Marsyas has often brought me to such a pass, that I have felt as
if I could hardly endure the life which I am leading (this, Socrates, you
will admit); and I am conscious that if I did not shut my ears against him,
and fly as from the voice of the siren, my fate would be like that of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: told the story, or rather the chronicle, of a voyage:
"Yes, I have seen a little of the Eastern seas; but what
I remember best is my first voyage there. You fellows
know there are those voyages that seem ordered for the
illustration of life, that might stand for a symbol of
existence. You fight, work, sweat, nearly kill yourself,
sometimes do kill yourself, trying to accomplish some-
thing--and you can't. Not from any fault of yours.
You simply can do nothing, neither great nor little--
not a thing in the world--not even marry an old maid, or
get a wretched 600-ton cargo of coal to its port of desti-
Youth |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James: The young man's impression of his prospective pupil, who had come
into the room as if to see for himself the moment Pemberton was
admitted, was not quite the soft solicitation the visitor had taken
for granted. Morgan Moreen was somehow sickly without being
"delicate," and that he looked intelligent - it is true Pemberton
wouldn't have enjoyed his being stupid - only added to the
suggestion that, as with his big mouth and big ears he really
couldn't be called pretty, he might too utterly fail to please.
Pemberton was modest, was even timid; and the chance that his small
scholar might prove cleverer than himself had quite figured, to his
anxiety, among the dangers of an untried experiment. He reflected,
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