| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: of its fashion; later he admired her idiotically for her cleverness.
He reasoned neither ill nor well; he was simply incapable of reasoning
at all; but he had the sense to subordinate himself to his sister, and
he did so from a consideration that was outside of the business. "She
is my elder," he said. Perhaps an existence like his, always solitary,
reduced to the satisfaction of mere needs, deprived of money and all
pleasures in youth, may explain to physiologists and thinkers the
clownish expression of the face, the feebleness of mind, the vacant
silliness of the man. His sister had steadily prevented him from
marrying, afraid perhaps to lose her power over him, and seeing only a
source of expense and injury in some woman who would certainly be
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: powerful hand was extended over them. It began when they received
firewood and provisions; and next the Sisters knew that a woman had
lent counsel to their protector, for linen was sent to them, and
clothes in which they could leave the house without causing remark
upon the aristocrat's dress that they had been forced to wear. After
awhile Mucius Scaevola gave them two civic cards; and often tidings
necessary for the priest's safety came to them in roundabout ways.
Warnings and advice reached them so opportunely that they could only
have been sent by some person in the possession of state secrets. And,
at a time when famine threatened Paris, invisible hands brought
rations of "white bread" for the proscribed women in the wretched
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from On Horsemanship by Xenophon: in particular a war-horse,[4] if unsound in his feet, however
excellent his other points; since he could not turn a single one of
them to good account.[5]
[4] Or, "and that a charger, we will suppose." For the simile see
"Mem." III. i. 7.
[5] Cf. Hor. "Sat." I. ii. 86:
regibus hic mos est: ubi equos mercantur, opertos
inspiciunt, ne, si facies, ut saepe, decora
molli fulta pede est, emptorem inducat hiantem,
quod pulchrae clunes, breve quod caput, ardua cervix.
and see Virg. "Georg." iii. 72 foll.
On Horsemanship |
