| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: debtors' prison, led the conversation to take this particular turn;
and from debtors' prisons they went to debts.
It was midnight. They had broken up into little knots round the table
and before the fire, and gave themselves up to the burlesque fun which
is only possible or comprehensible in Paris and in that particular
region which is bounded by the Faubourg Montmartre, the Rue Chaussee
d'Antin, the upper end of the Rue de Navarin and the line of the
boulevards.
In ten minutes' time they had come to an end of all the deep
reflections, all the moralizings, small and great, all the bad puns
made on a subject already exhausted by Rabelais three hundred and
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: the hunchback was the mouthpiece and advocate, then did he turn to his
disciples in profound dejection, and said:
Verily, my friends, I walk amongst men as amongst the fragments and limbs
of human beings!
This is the terrible thing to mine eye, that I find man broken up, and
scattered about, as on a battle- and butcher-ground.
And when mine eye fleeth from the present to the bygone, it findeth ever
the same: fragments and limbs and fearful chances--but no men!
The present and the bygone upon earth--ah! my friends--that is MY most
unbearable trouble; and I should not know how to live, if I were not a seer
of what is to come.
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: speaking, men of good-humour and some gallantry; and a
small matter of conduct, especially if there was any money
to be had, would make way for him to buy himself off when
he came to Virginia.
He looked wistfully at me, and I thought I guessed at what he
meant, that is to say, that he had no money; but I was mistaken,
his meaning was another way. 'You hinted just now, my dear,'
said he, 'that there might be a way of coming back before I
went, by which I understood you that it might be possible to
buy it off here. I had rather give #200 to prevent going, than
#100 to be set at liberty when I came there.' 'That is, my dear,'
Moll Flanders |
