| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: women, and ask them--"
"But," said the marquise, interrupting the princess, "why ask the
dead? We know living women who have been happy. I have talked on this
very subject a score of times with Madame de Montcornet since she
married that little Emile Blondet, who makes her the happiest woman in
the world; not an infidelity, not a thought that turns aside from her;
they are as happy as they were the first day. These long attachments,
like that of Rastignac and Madame de Nucingen, and your cousin, Madame
de Camps, for her Octave, have a secret, and that secret you and I
don't know, my dear. The world has paid us the extreme compliment of
thinking we are two rakes worthy of the court of the regent; whereas
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: space is also the one of which we have the most difficulty in ridding
ourselves. Neither can we set a limit to it, for wherever we fix a limit,
space is springing up beyond. Neither can we conceive a smallest or
indivisible portion of it; for within the smallest there is a smaller
still; and even these inconceivable qualities of space, whether the
infinite or the infinitesimal, may be made the subject of reasoning and
have a certain truth to us.
Whether space exists in the mind or out of it, is a question which has no
meaning. We should rather say that without it the mind is incapable of
conceiving the body, and therefore of conceiving itself. The mind may be
indeed imagined to contain the body, in the same way that Aristotle (partly
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: Lansing still smiled. "The question is, I suppose, whether her
desire to shine equals her capacity."
The aide-de-camp stared. "You mean, she's not ambitious?"
"On the contrary; I believe her to be immeasurably ambitious."
"Immeasurably?" The aide-de-camp seemed to try to measure it.
"But not, surely, beyond--" "beyond what we can offer," his eyes
completed the sentence; and it was Lansing's turn to stare. The
aide-de-camp faced the stare. "Yes," his eyes concluded in a
flash, while his lips let fall: "The Princess Mother admires
her immensely." But at that moment a wave of Mrs. Hicks's fan
drew them hurriedly from their embrasure.
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