| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: Savinien awoke. He then saw Ursula in the slight disarray naturally
caused by the jolting of the vehicle; her cap was rumpled and half
off; the hair, unbound, had fallen each side of her face, which glowed
from the heat of the night; in this situation, dreadful for women to
whom dress is a necessary auxiliary, youth and beauty triumphed. The
sleep of innocence is always lovely. The half-opened lips showed the
pretty teeth; the shawl, unfastened, gave to view, beneath the folds
of her muslin gown and without offence to her modesty, the
gracefulness of her figure. The purity of the virgin spirit shone on
the sleeping countenance all the more plainly because no other
expression was there to interfere with it. Old Minoret, who presently
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon: to that wise man Prodicus;[100] they were a match, you saw, the one
enamoured of philosophy, and the other in need of money. It was you
again, I am well enough aware, who introduced him once again to
Hippias[101] of Elis, from whom he learnt his "art of memory";[102]
since which time he has become a very ardent lover,[103] from
inability to forget each lovely thing he sets his eyes on. And quite
lately, if I am not mistaken, it was you who sounded in my ears such
praise of our visitor from Heraclea,[104] that first you made me
thirst for his society, and then united us.[105] For which indeed I am
your debtor, since I find him a fine handsome fellow and true
gentleman.[106] And did you not, moreover, sing the praises of
The Symposium |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: the nineteenth century, was in an altogether new social situation,
At the beginning of the great French war; and, indeed, ever since
the beginning of the war with Spain in 1739--often snubbed as the
"war about Jenkins's ear"--but which was, as I hold, one of the
most just, as it was one of the most popular, of all our wars;
after, too, the once famous "forty fine harvests" of the
eighteenth century, the British people, from the gentleman who led
to the soldier or sailor who followed, were one of the mightiest
and most capable races which the world has ever seen, comparable
best to the old Roman, at his mightiest and most capable period.
That, at least, their works testify. They created--as far as man
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