| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: gathering some flowers in her greenhouse; "you are really
incomprehensible. Why are you not furious with him?"
"Poor Paz is--"
"Poor Paz, poor Paz, indeed!" she cried, interrupting him, "what good
does he do us? I shall take the management of the household myself.
You can give him the allowance he refused, and let him settle it as he
likes with his Circus."
"He is very useful to us, Clementine. He has certainly saved over
forty thousand francs this last year. And besides, my dear angel, he
has managed to put a hundred thousand with Nucingen, which a steward
would have pocketed."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: the air by shrill hysterical lips--it was really very good in its way,
quite a suggestion. I thought of telling the prophet that art had
a soul, but that man had not. I am afraid, however, he would not have
understood me."
"Don't, Harry. The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought,
and sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect.
There is a soul in each one of us. I know it."
"Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?"
"Quite sure."
"Ah! then it must be an illusion. The things one feels
absolutely certain about are never true. That is the fatality
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: the verb 'to know.' And here Dionysodorus is caught 'napping,' and is
induced by Socrates to confess that 'he does not know the good to be
unjust.' Socrates appeals to his brother Euthydemus; at the same time he
acknowledges that he cannot, like Heracles, fight against a Hydra, and even
Heracles, on the approach of a second monster, called upon his nephew
Iolaus to help. Dionysodorus rejoins that Iolaus was no more the nephew of
Heracles than of Socrates. For a nephew is a nephew, and a brother is a
brother, and a father is a father, not of one man only, but of all; nor of
men only, but of dogs and sea-monsters. Ctesippus makes merry with the
consequences which follow: 'Much good has your father got out of the
wisdom of his puppies.'
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