| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: Rastignac, when they happened to be comparatively alone between one
and two o'clock in the morning.
"I am told that the Comtesse de Vandenesse has taken a violent fancy
to you. You are not to be pitied!" said Rastignac.
"I did not see her," said Raoul.
"Oh! but you will see her, you scamp!" cried Emile Blondet, who was
standing by. "Lady Dudley is going to ask you to her grand ball, that
you may meet the pretty countess."
Raoul and Blondet went off with Rastignac, who offered them his
carriage. All three laughed at the combination of an eclectic under-
secretary of State, a ferocious republican, and a political atheist.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: away from it at a thousand other points of the social circumference.
Besides, she lets only one trait of her character be known, and that
the only one which renders her blamable; her noble virtues are hidden;
she prefers to glory in her naive libertinism. Most incompletely
rendered in dramas and tales where she is put upon the scene with all
her poesy, she is nowhere really true but in her garret; elsewhere she
is invariably calumniated or over-praised. Rich, she deteriorates;
poor, she is misunderstood. She has too many vices, and too many good
qualities; she is too near to pathetic asphyxiation or to a dissolute
laugh; too beautiful and too hideous. She personifies Paris, to which,
in the long run, she supplies the toothless portresses, washerwomen,
Ferragus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: many can see better than one, in leading others who are now beginning to
avail themselves of my principles, to assist me in turn with their
discoveries. But though I recognize my extreme liability to error, and
scarce ever trust to the first thoughts which occur to me, yet-the
experience I have had of possible objections to my views prevents me from
anticipating any profit from them. For I have already had frequent proof
of the judgments, as well of those I esteemed friends, as of some others
to whom I thought I was an object of indifference, and even of some whose
malignancy and envy would, I knew, determine them to endeavor to discover
what partiality concealed from the eyes of my friends. But it has rarely
happened that anything has been objected to me which I had myself
Reason Discourse |
