| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: the nobler calculations of sentiment.
The farther she advanced towards that fatal epoch so adroitly called
the "second youth," the more her distrust increased. She affected to
present herself in the most unfavorable light, and played her part so
well that the last wooers hesitated to link their fate to that of a
person whose virtuous blind-man's-buff required an amount of
penetration that men who want the virtuous ready-made would not bestow
upon it. The constant fear of being married for her money rendered her
suspicious and uneasy beyond all reason. She turned to the rich men;
but the rich are in search of great marriages; she feared the poor
men, in whom she denied the disinterestedness she sought so eagerly.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon: [18] See the Attic type of character, as drawn by Pericles, Thuc. ii.
40.
Whether indeed Aphrodite be one or twain[19] in personality, the
heavenly and the earthly, I cannot tell, for Zeus, who is one and
indivisible, bears many titles.[20] But this thing I know, that these
twain have separate altars, shrines, and sacrifices,[21] as befits
their nature--she that is earthly, of a lighter and a laxer sort; she
that is heavenly, purer and holier in type. And you may well
conjecture, it is the earthly goddess, the common Aphrodite, who sends
forth the bodily loves; while from her that is named of heaven,
Ourania, proceed those loves which feed upon the soul, on friendship
The Symposium |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: I laughed the only really refreshing laugh I had had
for some time; and shouted:
"Merlin has wrought a spell! MERLIN, forsooth!
That cheap old humbug, that maundering old ass?
Bosh, pure bosh, the silliest bosh in the world! Why,
it does seem to me that of all the childish, idiotic,
chuckle-headed, chicken-livered superstitions that
ev -- oh, damn Merlin!"
But Clarence had slumped to his knees before I had
half finished, and he was like to go out of his mind
with fright.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
