| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it
happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept, with more of time,
into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled.
And thus too, it happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of
the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many
individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of
the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the
attention of no single individual before. And the rumour of this
new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose
at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of
disapprobation and surprise--then, finally, of terror, of horror,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: values other than the beastly rent-values, and in short, in short -
! But it was thus Miss Staverton took him up. "In short you're to
make so good a thing of your sky-scraper that, living in luxury on
THOSE ill-gotten gains, you can afford for a while to be
sentimental here!" Her smile had for him, with the words, the
particular mild irony with which he found half her talk suffused;
an irony without bitterness and that came, exactly, from her having
so much imagination - not, like the cheap sarcasms with which one
heard most people, about the world of "society," bid for the
reputation of cleverness, from nobody's really having any. It was
agreeable to him at this very moment to be sure that when he had
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: SOCRATES: Certain persons who are reputed to be masters in natural
philosophy, who deny the very existence of pleasure.
PROTARCHUS: Indeed!
SOCRATES: They say that what the school of Philebus calls pleasures are
all of them only avoidances of pain.
PROTARCHUS: And would you, Socrates, have us agree with them?
SOCRATES: Why, no, I would rather use them as a sort of diviners, who
divine the truth, not by rules of art, but by an instinctive repugnance and
extreme detestation which a noble nature has of the power of pleasure, in
which they think that there is nothing sound, and her seductive influence
is declared by them to be witchcraft, and not pleasure. This is the use
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