| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: idea we have of him? And are our ears practised in any degree on
the subject? Nay, do you understand what Nature is? can you
follow me in any degree when I say that I shall have to use
demonstration? Do you understand what Demonstration is? what True
or False is? . . .must I drive you to Philosophy? . . .Show me
what good I am to do by discoursing with you. Rouse my desire to
do so. The sight of a pasture it loves stirs in a sheep the
desire to feed: show it a stone or a bit of bread and it remains
unmoved. Thus we also have certain natural desires, aye, and one
that moves us to speak when we find a listener that is worth his
salt: one that hhimself stirs the spirit. But if he sits by like
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: they have to produce offspring, quite regardless of times
and seasons <114> and the general fitness of things ; they
have to do this as expeditiously as possible, so that they
may not unduly interrupt the work in hand; nobody helps them,
notices them, or cares about them, least of all the husband.
It is quite a usual thing to see them working in the fields
in the morning, and working again in the afternoon, having in
the interval produced a baby. The baby is left to an old
woman whose duty it is to look after babies collectively.
When I expressed my horror at the poor creatures working
immediately afterwards as though nothing had happened, the Man
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: PART II
CHAPTER I
THE LEADING SOCIETY OF SOULANGES
About six kilometres (speaking legally) from Blangy, and at the same
distance from Ville-aux-Fayes, on an elevation radiating from the long
hillside at the foot of which flows the Avonne, stands the little town
of Soulanges, surnamed La Jolie, with, perhaps, more right to that
title than Mantes.
At the foot of the hill, the Thune broadens over a clay bottom to a
space of some seventy acres, at the end of which the Soulanges mills,
placed on numerous little islets, present as graceful a group of
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