| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: umbrella-man in full dress, and they were about to start, when
Virginie, the cook, caught him by the arm:--
"Monsieur, madame does not wish you to go out--"
"Pshaw!" said Birotteau, "more women's notions!"
"--without your coffee, which is ready."
"That's true. My neighbor," he said to Cayron, "I have so many things
in my head that I can't think of my stomach. Do me the kindness to go
forward; we will meet at Monsieur Molineux' door, unless you are
willing to go up and explain matters to him, which would save time."
Monsieur Molineux was a grotesque little man, living on his rents,--a
species of being that exists nowhere but in Paris, like a certain
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: professing to be a pilot when he is not, or any physician or general, or
any one else pretending to know matters of which he is ignorant, will
deceive or elude us; our health will be improved; our safety at sea, and
also in battle, will be assured; our coats and shoes, and all other
instruments and implements will be skilfully made, because the workmen will
be good and true. Aye, and if you please, you may suppose that prophecy,
which is the knowledge of the future, will be under the control of wisdom,
and that she will deter deceivers and set up the true prophets in their
place as the revealers of the future. Now I quite agree that mankind, thus
provided, would live and act according to knowledge, for wisdom would watch
and prevent ignorance from intruding on us. But whether by acting
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: hauntingly remained with him, when he didn't indeed rather improve
it by a still intenser form: that of his opening a door behind
which he would have made sure of finding nothing, a door into a
room shuttered and void, and yet so coming, with a great suppressed
start, on some quite erect confronting presence, something planted
in the middle of the place and facing him through the dusk. After
that visit to the house in construction he walked with his
companion to see the other and always so much the better one, which
in the eastward direction formed one of the corners, - the "jolly"
one precisely, of the street now so generally dishonoured and
disfigured in its westward reaches, and of the comparatively
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