| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: this world's goods which should sharpen our spirits, and make so
many kind-hearted brethren of us fall out so cruelly as we do by
the way?
When man is at peace with man, how much lighter than a feather is
the heaviest of metals in his hand! he pulls out his purse, and
holding it airily and uncompressed, looks round him, as if he
sought for an object to share it with. - In doing this, I felt
every vessel in my frame dilate, - the arteries beat all cheerily
together, and every power which sustained life, performed it with
so little friction, that 'twould have confounded the most PHYSICAL
PRECIEUSE in France; with all her materialism, she could scarce
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: put an end. In one corner, near a window looking out on the colonnade,
gloomy, with a fixed gaze and rigid attitude, Emilio was a dismal
image of despair.
"That crazy fellow," said the physician, in French, to Vendramin,
"does not know what he wants. Here is a man who can make of a
Massimilla Doni a being apart from the rest of creation, possessing
her in heaven, amid ideal splendor such as no power on earth can make
real. He can behold his mistress for ever sublime and pure, can always
hear within him what we have just heard on the seashore; can always
live in the light of a pair of eyes which create for him the warm and
golden glow that surrounds the Virgin in Titian's Assumption,--after
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: the art of the oxherd, and all other things are tended or attended for
their good and not for their hurt?
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly, not for their hurt.
SOCRATES: But for their good?
EUTHYPHRO: Of course.
SOCRATES: And does piety or holiness, which has been defined to be the art
of attending to the gods, benefit or improve them? Would you say that when
you do a holy act you make any of the gods better?
EUTHYPHRO: No, no; that was certainly not what I meant.
SOCRATES: And I, Euthyphro, never supposed that you did. I asked you the
question about the nature of the attention, because I thought that you did
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