| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela: one pinch of salt with which to flavor the horrible taste
of dry meat. The owners of the huts, their peaceful
brethren, were impassive with the stonelike impassivity
of Aztec idols; others, more human, with a slow smile on
their colorless lips and beardless faces, watched these
fierce men who less than a month ago had made the
miserable huts of others tremble with fear, now in their
turn fleeing their own huts where the ovens were cold
and the water tanks dry, fleeing with their tails between
their legs, cringing, like curs kicked out of their own
houses.
The Underdogs |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: doing: he who does not fly from reproof will be sure to take more heed of
his after-life; as Solon says, he will wish and desire to be learning so
long as he lives, and will not think that old age of itself brings wisdom.
To me, to be cross-examined by Socrates is neither unusual nor unpleasant;
indeed, I knew all along that where Socrates was, the argument would soon
pass from our sons to ourselves; and therefore, I say that for my part, I
am quite willing to discourse with Socrates in his own manner; but you had
better ask our friend Laches what his feeling may be.
LACHES: I have but one feeling, Nicias, or (shall I say?) two feelings,
about discussions. Some would think that I am a lover, and to others I may
seem to be a hater of discourse; for when I hear a man discoursing of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: "There is very little of it," his son remarked.
Though Bartolommeo could no longer speak, he could still hear and
see. When those words dropped from Don Juan, his head turned with
appalling quickness, his neck was twisted like the throat of some
marble statue which the sculptor had condemned to remain
stretched out for ever, the wide eyes had come to have a ghastly
fixity.
He was dead, and in death he lost his last and sole illusion.
He had sought a shelter in his son's heart, and it had proved to
be a sepulchre, a pit deeper than men dig for their dead. The
hair on his head had risen and stiffened with horror, his
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