The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: knowing that she was waiting.
Sometimes she worried. She thought she ought to "do something." A
good many of the girls she knew wanted to do something, but they were
vague as to what. She felt at those times that she was not being
very useful, and she had gone so far as to lay the matter before her
father a couple of years before, when she was just eighteen.
"Just what do you think of doing?" he had inquired.
"That's it," she had said despondently. "I don't know. I haven't
any particular talent, you know. But I don't think I ought to go on
having you support me in idleness all my life."
"Well, I don't think it likely that I'll have to," he had observed,
 The Breaking Point |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: passage by the ship. It is a masterpiece, painted for Marie de
Medicis, and afterwards sold by her in the days of her distress.
"I like your saint," said the old man to Porbus, "and I will give you
ten golden crowns over and above the queen's offer; but as to entering
into competition with her--the devil!"
"You do like her, then?"
"As for that," said the old man, "yes, and no. The good woman is well
set-up, but--she is not living. You young men think you have done all
when you have drawn the form correctly, and put everything in place
according to the laws of anatomy. You color the features with flesh-
tones, mixed beforehand on your palette,--taking very good care to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: can be nobler than love for the sake of virtue. This is that love of the
heavenly goddess which is of great price to individuals and cities, making
them work together for their improvement.
The turn of Aristophanes comes next; but he has the hiccough, and therefore
proposes that Eryximachus the physician shall cure him or speak in his
turn. Eryximachus is ready to do both, and after prescribing for the
hiccough, speaks as follows:--
He agrees with Pausanias in maintaining that there are two kinds of love;
but his art has led him to the further conclusion that the empire of this
double love extends over all things, and is to be found in animals and
plants as well as in man. In the human body also there are two loves; and
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