| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: HIPPIAS: So they are--very.
SOCRATES: And if they are prudent, do they know or do they not know what
they do?
HIPPIAS: Of course, they know very well; and that is why they do mischief
to others.
SOCRATES: And having this knowledge, are they ignorant, or are they wise?
HIPPIAS: Wise, certainly; at least, in so far as they can deceive.
SOCRATES: Stop, and let us recall to mind what you are saying; are you not
saying that the false are powerful and prudent and knowing and wise in
those things about which they are false?
HIPPIAS: To be sure.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: but she was crying with rage. Instead of the sacred images she hoped
to see, those glaring nights when she had led some orgy as Habeneck
leads a Beethoven symphony at the Conservatoire--nights of laughter
and lasciviousness, with vehement gestures, inextinguishable laughter,
rose before her, frenzied, furious, and brutal. She was as mild to
look upon as a virgin that clings to earth only by her woman's shape;
within raged an imperial Messalina.
She alone knew the secret of this struggle between the devil and the
angel. When the Superior reproved her for having done her hair more
fashionably than the rule of the House allowed, she altered it with
prompt and beautiful submission; she would have cut her hair off if
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs: it must be but a figment of his wounded brain.
What was that which clicked against his breastplate?
He felt, and found a metal bauble linked to a mesh of
his steel armor by a strand of silken hair. He carried
the little thing to the window, and in the waning light
made it out to be a golden hair ornament set with
precious stones, but he could not tell if the little strand
of silken hair were black or brown. Carefully he de-
tached the little thing, and, winding the filmy tress
about it, placed it within the breast of his tunic. He
was vaguely troubled by it, yet why he could scarcely
The Outlaw of Torn |
