| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: perfection.
"You have not danced once this evening, madame," said he in soft and
flattering tones. "Not, I should suppose, for lack of a partner?"
"I never go to parties; I am quite unknown," replied Madame de
Soulanges coldly, not having understood the look by which her aunt had
just conveyed to her that she was to attract the Baron.
Martial, to give himself countenance, twisted the diamond he wore on
his left hand; the rainbow fires of the gem seemed to flash a sudden
light on the young Countess' mind; she blushed and looked at the Baron
with an undefinable expression.
"Do you like dancing?" asked the Provencal, to reopen the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon: 3, 7; Plut. "Solon," 23.
The other (in a tone of deep vexation): Pray, what thing of the sort
are you aware I ever perpetrated?
Soc. I am aware that it was you who introduced our host here, Callias,
to that wise man Prodicus;[100] they were a match, you saw, the one
enamoured of philosophy, and the other in need of money. It was you
again, I am well enough aware, who introduced him once again to
Hippias[101] of Elis, from whom he learnt his "art of memory";[102]
since which time he has become a very ardent lover,[103] from
inability to forget each lovely thing he sets his eyes on. And quite
lately, if I am not mistaken, it was you who sounded in my ears such
The Symposium |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: other, if never in the same, cannot be either in the one or in the not one.
And one is not other than not one, either by reason of other or of itself;
and therefore they are not other than one another at all. Neither can the
not one partake or be part of one, for in that case it would be one; nor
can the not one be number, for that also involves one. And therefore, not
being other than the one or related to the one as a whole to parts or parts
to a whole, not one is the same as one. Wherefore the one is the same and
also not the same with the others and also with itself; and is therefore
like and unlike itself and the others, and just as different from the
others as they are from the one, neither more nor less. But if neither
more nor less, equally different; and therefore the one and the others have
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