| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: attendance was more than problematical; and boston could not be played
night after night unless at least four persons were present. The
defection of her two principal guests obliged her therefore to make
suitable apologies and return to her evening visiting among former
friends; for old maids find their own company so distasteful that they
prefer to seek the doubtful pleasures of society.
The cause of this desertion is plain enough. Although the vicar was
one of those to whom heaven is hereafter to belong in virtue of the
decree "Blessed are the poor in spirit," he could not, like some
fools, endure the annoyance that other fools caused him. Persons
without minds are like weeds that delight in good earth; they want to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: under the sway of Aphrodite, and then again plurality and war, by reason of
a principle of strife. Whether any of them spoke the truth in all this is
hard to determine; besides, antiquity and famous men should have reverence,
and not be liable to accusations so serious. Yet one thing may be said of
them without offence--
THEAETETUS: What thing?
STRANGER: That they went on their several ways disdaining to notice people
like ourselves; they did not care whether they took us with them, or left
us behind them.
THEAETETUS: How do you mean?
STRANGER: I mean to say, that when they talk of one, two, or more
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: The depth of the fontis varied, as well as their length and their density,
according to the more or less bad quality of the sub-soil. Sometimes
a fontis was three or four feet deep, sometimes eight or ten;
sometimes the bottom was unfathomable. Here the mire was almost solid,
there almost liquid. In the Luniere fontis, it would have taken
a man a day to disappear, while he would have been devoured in five
minutes by the Philippeaux slough. The mire bears up more or less,
according to its density. A child can escape where a man will perish.
The first law of safety is to get rid of every sort of load.
Every sewerman who felt the ground giving way beneath him began
by flinging away his sack of tools, or his back-basket, or his hod.
Les Miserables |
