| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: I have no sort of taste for that kind of life, and I see no future in
it. It is only fit for a widow that wishes to keep body and soul
together, or for some hideously ugly thing that fancies she can catch
a husband with a little finery.'
" 'It was your own choice,' returned the Count. Just at that moment,
in came Nucingen, of whom Maxime, king of lions (the 'yellow kid
gloves' were the lions of that day) had won three thousand francs the
evening before. Nucingen had come to pay his gaming debt.
" 'Ein writ of attachment haf shoost peen served on me by der order of
dot teufel Glabaron,' he said, seeing Maxime's astonishment.
" 'Oh, so that is how they are going to work, is it?' cried Maxime.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: give.
The world refused him nothing save faith and prayer, the soothing and
consoling love that is not of this world. He was obeyed--it was a
horrible position.
The torrents of pain, and pleasure, and thought that shook his soul
and his bodily frame would have overwhelmed the strongest human being;
but in him there was a power of vitality proportioned to the power of
the sensations that assailed him. He felt within him a vague immensity
of longing that earth could not satisfy. He spent his days on
outspread wings, longing to traverse the luminous fields of space to
other spheres that he knew afar by intuitive perception, a clear and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: you never stirred out of her; the halt, the blind, the maimed, were not
more stationary in her than you were. And now you run away and forsake
your agreements. Not so, Socrates, if you will take our advice; do not
make yourself ridiculous by escaping out of the city.
'For just consider, if you transgress and err in this sort of way, what
good will you do either to yourself or to your friends? That your friends
will be driven into exile and deprived of citizenship, or will lose their
property, is tolerably certain; and you yourself, if you fly to one of the
neighbouring cities, as, for example, Thebes or Megara, both of which are
well governed, will come to them as an enemy, Socrates, and their
government will be against you, and all patriotic citizens will cast an
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