| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: my friend. Now, then, my dear Paul, instead of setting sail for
India you would do a much wiser thing to navigate with me the
waters of the Seine. Believe me, Paris is still the place where
fortune, abundant fortune, can be won. Potosi is in the rue
Vivienne, the rue de la Paix, the Place Vendome, the rue de
Rivoli. In all other places and countries material works and
labors, marches and counter-marches, and sweatings of the brow are
necessary to the building up of fortune; but in Paris THOUGHT
suffices. Here, every man even mentally mediocre, can see a mine
of wealth as he puts on his slippers, or picks his teeth after
dinner, in his down-sitting and his up-rising. Find me another
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: world in which we think we live is the surest and most certain
thing our eyes can light upon: we find proof after proof thereof,
which would fain allure us into surmises concerning a deceptive
principle in the "nature of things." He, however, who makes
thinking itself, and consequently "the spirit," responsible for
the falseness of the world--an honourable exit, which every
conscious or unconscious advocatus dei avails himself of--he who
regards this world, including space, time, form, and movement, as
falsely DEDUCED, would have at least good reason in the end to
become distrustful also of all thinking; has it not hitherto been
playing upon us the worst of scurvy tricks? and what guarantee
Beyond Good and Evil |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: once. Our dear Birotteau is at the beginning of his troubles. Besides,
would he be left in peace and comfort even if he did give up his
lodging to Troubert? I doubt it. If Caron came here to tell you that
you intended to leave Mademoiselle Gamard," he added, turning to the
bewildered priest, "no doubt Mademoiselle Gamard's intention is to
turn you out. Therefore you will have to go, whether you like it or
not. Her sort of people play a sure game, they risk nothing."
This old gentleman, Monsieur de Bourbonne, could sum up and estimate
provincial ideas as correctly as Voltaire summarized the spirit of his
times. He was thin and tall, and chose to exhibit in the matter of
clothes the quiet indifference of a landowner whose territorial value
|
