Today's Stichomancy for Ariel Sharon

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw:

bed and standing in corners and the like they have suffered because their parents and guardians and teachers knew everything so much better than Socrates or Solon?

It is this ignorant uppishness that does the mischief. A stranger on the planet might expect that its grotesque absurdity would provoke enough ridicule to cure it; but unfortunately quite the contrary happens. Just as our ill health delivers us into the hands of medical quacks and creates a passionate demand for impudent pretences that doctors can cure the diseases they themselves die of daily, so our ignorance and helplessness set us clamoring for spiritual and moral quacks who pretend that they can save our souls from their own

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James:

I had an idea that she read Aspern's letters over every night or at least pressed them to her withered lips. I would have given a good deal to have a glimpse of the latter spectacle. I asked Miss Tita if the old lady were seriously ill, and she replied that she was only very tired--she had lived so very, very long. That was what she said herself--she wanted to die for a change. Besides, all her friends were dead long ago; either they ought to have remained or she ought to have gone. That was another thing her aunt often said--she was not at all content.

"But people don't die when they like, do they?" Miss Tita inquired.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton:

"Good Lord--YOU? But what for? I knew your aunt had turned you down: Mrs. Fisher told me about it. But I understood you got a legacy from her---"

"I got ten thousand dollars; but the legacy is not to be paid till next summer."

"Well, but--look here: you could BORROW on it any time you wanted."

She shook her head gravely. "No; for I owe it already."

"Owe it? The whole ten thousand?"

"Every penny." She paused, and then continued abruptly, with her eyes on his face: "I think Gus Trenor spoke to you once about

The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon:

happiness and the unhappiness of mankind.

[3] There is some redundancy in the phraseology.

I repeat then, I little marvel that the multitude should be blinded in this matter. But that you others also, you who are held to see with the mind's eye more clearly than with the eye of sense the mass of circumstances,[4] should share its ignorance, does indeed excite my wonderment. Now, I know it all too plainly from my own experience, Simonides, and I assure you, the tyrant is one who has the smallest share of life's blessings, whilst of its greater miseries he possesses most.

[4] Lit. "the majority of things"; al. "the thousand details of a