| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: perception.[12] So that up to this point I do not see that the
despotic life differs in any way at all from that of common people.
[12] i.e. "being like constituted, the autocratic person has no other
sources of perception: he has no claim to a wider gamut of
sensation, and consequently thus far there is not a pin to choose
between the life of the despot and that of a private person."
Then Simonides: Only in this respect it surely differs, in that the
pleasures which the "tyrant" enjoys through all these several avenues
of sense are many times more numerous, and the pains he suffers are
far fewer.
To which Hiero: Nay, that is not so, Simonides, take my word for it;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: quite close behind me, and as I raised myself upon my hands
and glanced around I saw what it was that had distracted
the DYRYTH, as I afterward learned the thing is called,
from my trail.
It was surrounded by a pack of some hundred wolf-like
creatures--wild dogs they seemed--that rushed growling
and snapping in upon it from all sides, so that they sank
their white fangs into the slow brute and were away again
before it could reach them with its huge paws or sweeping tail.
But these were not all that my startled eyes perceived.
Chattering and gibbering through the lower branches of
At the Earth's Core |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: a hundred louis, when I lost at lansquenet this morning, at Jenny
Cadine's."
"You must indeed me hard-up if you can't oblige this poor Bixiou,"
said Leon de Lora; "for he can be very sharp-tongued when he hasn't a
sou."
"Well," said Bixiou, "I could never say anything but good of Vauvinet;
he's full of goods."
"My dear friend," said Vauvinet, "if I had the money, I couldn't
possibly discount, even at fifty per cent, notes which are drawn by
your porter. Ravenouillet's paper isn't in demand. He's not a
Rothschild. I warn you that his notes are worn thin; you had better
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