| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Salome by Oscar Wilde: pendant toute la soiree. Votre beaute m'a trouble. Votre beaute
m'a terriblement trouble, et je vous ai trop regardee. Mais je ne
le ferai plus. Il ne faut regarder ni les choses ni les personnes.
Il ne faut regarder que dans les miroirs. Car les miroirs ne nous
montrent que des masques . . . Oh! Oh! du vin! j'ai soif . . .
Salome, Salome, soyons amis. Enfin, voyez . . . Qu'est-ce que je
voulais dire? Qu'est-ce que c'etait? Ah! je m'en souviens! . . .
Salome! Non, venez plus pres de moi. J'ai peur que vous ne
m'entendiez pas . . . Salome, vous connaissez mes paons blancs, mes
beaux paons blancs, qui se promenent dans le jardin entre les myrtes
et les grands cypres. Leurs becs sont dores, et les grains qu'ils
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: with hoof-prints evidencing a desperate struggle
to regain the lost foothold, I looked quite hopefully
over the dizzy precipice. But there was nobody down there.
They take exceedingly good care of their rivers in Switzerland
and other portions of Europe. They wall up both banks
with slanting solid stone masonry--so that from end
to end of these rivers the banks look like the wharves
at St. Louis and other towns on the Mississippi River.
It was during this walk from St. Nicholas, in the shadow
of the majestic Alps, that we came across some little
children amusing themselves in what seemed, at first,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: may imagine a position of the body in which the head is resting upon the
ground, and the legs are in the air, and the top is bottom and the left
right. And something similar happens when the disordered motions of the
soul come into contact with any external thing; they say the same or the
other in a manner which is the very opposite of the truth, and they are
false and foolish, and have no guiding principle in them. And when
external impressions enter in, they are really conquered, though they seem
to conquer.
By reason of these affections the soul is at first without intelligence,
but as time goes on the stream of nutriment abates, and the courses of the
soul regain their proper motion, and apprehend the same and the other
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