| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: not yet chilled. Already the little countess had made herself mistress
of the situation, for she scarcely paid attention to her husband's
admiration. In fact, in the look which she occasionally cast at him,
there seemed to be the consciousness of a Frenchwoman's ascendancy
over the puny, volatile, and red-haired Pole.
"Here comes Paz," said the count, hearing a step which echoed through
the gallery.
The countess beheld a tall and handsome man, well-made, and bearing on
his face the signs of pain which come of inward strength and secret
endurance of sorrow. He wore one of those tight, frogged overcoats
which were then called "polonaise." Thick, black hair, rather unkempt,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: by William Shakespeare
I
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: fidelity,[*] friendship, humanity, and religion. Therefore it is
necessary for him to have a mind ready to turn itself accordingly as
the winds and variations of fortune force it, yet, as I have said
above, not to diverge from the good if he can avoid doing so, but, if
compelled, then to know how to set about it.
[*] "Contrary to fidelity" or "faith," "contro alla fede," and "tutto
fede," "altogether faithful," in the next paragraph. It is
noteworthy that these two phrases, "contro alla fede" and "tutto
fede," were omitted in the Testina edition, which was published
with the sanction of the papal authorities. It may be that the
meaning attached to the word "fede" was "the faith," i.e. the
The Prince |
