| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: scrapes."
He swaggered up to the parlour window, and in
the dim light filtering through the blind, looked at
the coin lying in his palm. It was a half-sovereign.
He slipped it into his pocket. She stood a little on
one side, with her head drooping, as if wounded;
with her arms hanging passive by her side, as if
dead.
"You can't buy me in," he said, "and you can't
buy yourself out."
He set his hat firmly with a little tap, and next
To-morrow |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: the bad speaker also? For if he does not know the bad, neither will he
know the good when the same topic is being discussed.
ION: True.
SOCRATES: Is not the same person skilful in both?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And you say that Homer and the other poets, such as Hesiod and
Archilochus, speak of the same things, although not in the same way; but
the one speaks well and the other not so well?
ION: Yes; and I am right in saying so.
SOCRATES: And if you knew the good speaker, you would also know the
inferior speakers to be inferior?
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: by saying, "Call them what you like, provided they pay!"--his clients,
then, were rich people, through whom he had never lost money, who paid
when they pleased, and among whom Cesar often had a floating amount of
fifty or sixty thousand francs due to him. The second clerk went
through the books and copied off the largest sums. Cesar dreaded his
wife: that she might not see his depression under this simoom of
misfortune, he prepared to go out.
"Good morning, monsieur," said Grindot, entering with the lively
manner artists put on when they speak of business, and wish to pretend
they know nothing about it; "I cannot get your paper cashed, and I am
obliged to ask you to give me the amount in ready money. I am truly
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
