| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: threatening sound in the distance, as if a new kind of explosive
were being tried somewhere, a dynamite of the spirit, perhaps a
newly discovered Russian NIHILINE, a pessimism BONAE VOLUNTATIS,
that not only denies, means denial, but-dreadful thought!
PRACTISES denial. Against this kind of "good-will"--a will to the
veritable, actual negation of life--there is, as is generally
acknowledged nowadays, no better soporific and sedative than
skepticism, the mild, pleasing, lulling poppy of skepticism; and
Hamlet himself is now prescribed by the doctors of the day as an
antidote to the "spirit," and its underground noises. "Are not
our ears already full of bad sounds?" say the skeptics, as lovers
Beyond Good and Evil |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: And therefore the Ducs de Verneuil, de Lenoncourt, de Chaulieu, de
Navarreins, d'Herouville, de Grandlieu, and de Maufrigneuse, the
Princes de Cadignan and de Blamont-Chauvry, were delighted to present
the charming survivor of the wreck of an ancient family at court.
Victurnien went to the Tuileries in a splendid carriage with his
armorial bearings on the panels; but his presentation to His Majesty
made it abundantly clear to him that the people occupied the royal
mind so much that his nobility was like to be forgotten. The restored
dynasty, moreover, was surrounded by triple ranks of eligible old men
and gray-headed courtiers; the young noblesse was reduced to a cipher,
and this Victurnien guessed at once. He saw that there was no suitable
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: Then papa would teach us how to strap the hare on the back of the
saddle.
After the run we would all be in better spirits, and get to
better places near Yásenki and Rétinka. Gray hares
would get up oftener. Each of us would have his spoils in the
saddle-straps now, and we would begin to hope for a fox.
Not many foxes would turn up. If they did, it was generally
Tumashka, who was old and staid, who distinguished himself. He
was sick of hares, and made no great effort to run after them;
but with a fox he would gallop at full speed, and it was almost
always he who killed.
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