| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: impression on Daddy Doguereau.
"Let him preserve these simple habits of life, this frugality, these
modest requirements," thought he.--Aloud he said: "It is a pleasure to
me to see you. Thus, sir, lived Jean-Jacques, whom you resemble in
more ways than one. Amid such surroundings the fire of genius shines
brightly; good work is done in such rooms as these. This is how men of
letters should work, instead of living riotously in cafes and
restaurants, wasting their time and talent and our money."
He sat down.
"Your romance is not bad, young man. I was a professor of rhetoric
once; I know French history, there are some capital things in it. You
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from King James Bible: unto them, See that ye fall not out by the way.
GEN 45:25 And they went up out of Egypt, and came into the land of
Canaan unto Jacob their father,
GEN 45:26 And told him, saying, Joseph is yet alive, and he is governor
over all the land of Egypt. And Jacob's heart fainted, for he believed
them not.
GEN 45:27 And they told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said
unto them: and when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry
him, the spirit of Jacob their father revived:
GEN 45:28 And Israel said, It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I
will go and see him before I die.
King James Bible |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: Second Alcibiades seems to be founded upon the text of Xenophon, Mem. A
similar taste for parody appears not only in the Phaedrus, but in the
Protagoras, in the Symposium, and to a certain extent in the Parmenides.
To these two doubtful writings of Plato I have added the First Alcibiades,
which, of all the disputed dialogues of Plato, has the greatest merit, and
is somewhat longer than any of them, though not verified by the testimony
of Aristotle, and in many respects at variance with the Symposium in the
description of the relations of Socrates and Alcibiades. Like the Lesser
Hippias and the Menexenus, it is to be compared to the earlier writings of
Plato. The motive of the piece may, perhaps, be found in that passage of
the Symposium in which Alcibiades describes himself as self-convicted by
|
