The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: down into it! Was that instinct--thought petrified by ages of
inherited habit?
Y.M. No, I don't believe it was. I believe it was a newly
reasoned scheme to meet a new emergency.
O.M. Very well. You have conceded the reasoning power in
two instances. I come now to a mental detail wherein the ant is
a long way the superior of any human being. Sir John Lubbock
proved by many experiments that an ant knows a stranger ant of
her own species in a moment, even when the stranger is disguised
--with paint. Also he proved that an ant knows every individual
in her hive of five hundred thousand souls. Also, after a year's
 What is Man? |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: up the scenery for the third act. But the two cousins, having drunk
their beer, wanted to go up into the theater again; the cold was
making itself felt. Then Mignon remained alone with Steiner, put
his elbows on the table and spoke to him at close quarters.
"It's an understood thing, eh? We are to go to her house, and I'm
to introduce you. You know the thing's quite between ourselves--my
wife needn't know."
Once more in their places, Fauchery and La Faloise noticed a pretty,
quietly dressed woman in the second tier of boxes. She was with a
serious-looking gentleman, a chief clerk at the office of the
Ministry of the Interior, whom La Faloise knew, having met him at
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: Elie Magus here bowed to the Vervelle family and went away. Grassou
accompanied him to the landing.
"There's no one but you who would fish up such whales."
"One hundred thousand francs of 'dot'!"
"Yes, but what a family!"
"Three hundred thousand francs of expectations, a house in the rue
Boucherat, and a country-house at Ville d'Avray!"
"Bottles and corks! bottles and corks!" said the painter; "they set my
teeth on edge."
"Safe from want for the rest of your days," said Elie Magus as he
departed.
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