| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: against the divine decree. Such alternations of feeling rend her heart
and make the struggle between body and soul most horrible. Often the
body triumphs. 'You have cost me dear,' she said one day to Jacques
and Madeleine; but in a moment, recalled to God by the look on my
face, she turned to Madeleine with these angelic words, 'The happiness
of others is the joy of those who cannot themselves be happy,'--and
the tone with which she said them brought tears to my eyes. She falls,
it is true, but each time that her feet stumble she rises higher
towards heaven."
Struck by the tone of the successive intimations chance had sent me,
and which in this great concert of misfortunes were like a prelude of
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: preferred according to her beauty and thy merits.
---Who sits above there?'' he continued, bending
his eye on the gallery. ``Saxon churls, lolling at
their lazy length!---out upon them!---let them sit
close, and make room for my prince of usurers and
his lovely daughter. I'll make the hinds know they
must share the high places of the synagogue with
those whom the synagogue properly belongs to.''
Those who occupied the gallery to whom this
injurious and unpolite speech was addressed, were
the family of Cedric the Saxon, with that of his
Ivanhoe |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon: shoulders.[41] I'll be bound, if both were weighed in the scales
apart, like "tops and bottoms," the clerks of the market[42] would let
you off scot-free.
[41] Lit. "your legs are equal in weight with your shoulders." Cf.
"Od." xviii. 373, {elikes . . . isophoroi boes}, "of equal age and
force to bear the yoke."--Butcher and Lang.
[42] See Boeckh, "Public Economy of Athens," p. 48; Aristoph.
"Acharn." 723; Lys. 165, 34.
Then Callias: O Socrates, do please invite me when you begin your
dancing lessons. I will be your vis-a-vis,[43] and take lessons with
you.
The Symposium |
