| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: at Alexandria. For Hegesias, a Cyrenaic like Theodorus, but a rather
more morose pedant than that saucy and happy scoffer, having discovered
that the great end of man was to avoid pain, also discovered (his
digestion being probably in a disordered state) that there was so much
more pain than pleasure in the world, as to make it a thoroughly
disagreeable place, of which man was well rid at any price. Whereon he
wrote a book called, [Greek text: apokarteroon], in which a man who had
determined to starve himself, preached the miseries of human life, and
the blessings of death, with such overpowering force, that the book
actually drove many persons to commit suicide, and escape from a world
which was not fit to dwell in. A fearful proof of how rotten the state
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: order to sell it to you again. The incident did really happen to
Maxime de Trailles about nine years ago; but it fits your present
circumstances so well that Maxime has forever lost the command of
his frigate.
In short, I can't tell you one-half that is said; you have
supplied a whole encyclopaedia of gossip which the women have an
interest in swelling. Your wife is having an immense success. Last
evening at the opera Madame Firmiani began to repeat to me some of
the things that are being said. "Don't talk of that," I replied.
"You know nothing of the real truth, you people. Paul has robbed
the Bank, cheated the Treasury, murdered Ezzelin and three Medoras
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Koran: mighty, the wise!
That is God's grace, He gives it to whomsoever He will; for God is
Lord of mighty grace.
The likeness of those who were charged with the law and then bore it
not is as the likeness of an ass bearing books: sorry is the
likeness of the people who say God's signs are lies! but God guides
not an unjust people.
Say, 'O ye who are Jews! if ye pretend that ye are the clients of
God, beyond other people; then wish for death if ye do speak the
truth!'
But they never wish for it, through what their hands have sent
The Koran |
