| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: prefigure the wayward and fantastic progress of a storm-tossed life?
What wind blew on that letter, which, whatever language we find it in,
begins scarcely fifty words? Marcas' name was Zephirin; Saint Zephirin
is highly venerated in Brittany, and Marcas was a Breton.
Study the name once more: Z Marcas! The man's whole life lies in this
fantastic juxtaposition of seven letters; seven! the most significant
of all the cabalistic numbers. And he died at five-and-thirty, so his
life extended over seven lustres.
Marcas! Does it not hint of some precious object that is broken with a
fall, with or without a crash?
I had finished studying the law in Paris in 1836. I lived at that time
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: ALCIBIADES: Very true.
SOCRATES: But how are you ever likely to know the nature of justice and
injustice, about which you are so perplexed, if you have neither learned
them of others nor discovered them yourself?
ALCIBIADES: From what you say, I suppose not.
SOCRATES: See, again, how inaccurately you speak, Alcibiades!
ALCIBIADES: In what respect?
SOCRATES: In saying that I say so.
ALCIBIADES: Why, did you not say that I know nothing of the just and
unjust?
SOCRATES: No; I did not.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Poems by Bronte Sisters: Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering!
Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
While the world's tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!
No later light has lightened up my heaven,
No second morn has ever shone for me;
All my life's bliss from thy dear life was given,
All my life's bliss is in the grave with thee.
But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,
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