| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: debt, though Dinah, who was proud, bought all her clothes out of her
savings, and fancied she had not been the smallest expense to her
beloved. By the end of three months Dinah was acclimatized; she had
reveled in the music at the Italian opera; she knew the pieces "on" at
all theatres, and the actors and jests of the day; she had become
inured to this life of perpetual excitement, this rapid torrent in
which everything is forgotten. She no longer craned her neck or stood
with her nose in the air, like an image of Amazement, at the constant
surprises that Paris has for a stranger. She had learned to breathe
that witty, vitalizing, teeming atmosphere where clever people feel
themselves in their element, and which they can no longer bear to
The Muse of the Department |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: foolish. For we acknowledged that there are these two classes? Did we
not?
ALCIBIADES: To be sure.
SOCRATES: And you regard those as sensible who know what ought to be done
or said?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: The senseless are those who do not know this?
ALCIBIADES: True.
SOCRATES: The latter will say or do what they ought not without their own
knowledge?
ALCIBIADES: Exactly.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon: for penal laws pressed, are a shower of snares upon
the people. Therefore let penal laws, if they have
been sleepers of long, or if they be grown unfit for
the present time, be by wise judges confined in the
execution: Judicis officium est, ut res, ita tempora
rerum, etc. In causes of life and death, judges ought
(as far as the law permitteth) in justice to remem-
ber mercy; and to cast a severe eye upon the
example, but a merciful eye upon the person.
Secondly, for the advocates and counsel that
plead. Patience and gravity of hearing, is an essen-
Essays of Francis Bacon |
