| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: ALCIBIADES: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: And they are not in the habit of deliberating about wrestling,
in the assembly?
ALCIBIADES: Hardly.
SOCRATES: Then what are the deliberations in which you propose to advise
them? Surely not about building?
ALCIBIADES: No.
SOCRATES: For the builder will advise better than you will about that?
ALCIBIADES: He will.
SOCRATES: Nor about divination?
ALCIBIADES: No.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: widow Wadman, there was nothing for widow Wadman to do, but to go on and
love my uncle Toby--or let it alone.
Widow Wadman would do neither the one or the other.
--Gracious heaven!--but I forget I am a little of her temper myself; for
whenever it so falls out, which it sometimes does about the equinoxes, that
an earthly goddess is so much this, and that, and t'other, that I cannot
eat my breakfast for her--and that she careth not three halfpence whether I
eat my breakfast or no--
--Curse on her! and so I send her to Tartary, and from Tartary to Terra del
Fuogo, and so on to the devil: in short, there is not an infernal nitch
where I do not take her divinityship and stick it.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: you will only dine at Flicoteaux's when you happen to have less than
thirty sous in your pocket and no dinner engagement. At the
Luxembourg, at five o'clock, you did not know which way to turn; now,
you are on the eve of entering a privileged class, you will be one of
the hundred persons who tell France what to think. In three days'
time, if all goes well, you can, if you choose, make a man's life a
curse to him by putting thirty jokes at his expense in print at the
rate of three a day; you can, if you choose, draw a revenue of
pleasure from the actresses at your theatres; you can wreck a good
play and send all Paris running after a bad one. If Dauriat declines
to pay you for your Marguerites, you can make him come to you, and
|
