| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: sublime, remain beautiful. On the other hand, the flagrant beauty of
their heads is not understood. An artist's face is always exorbitant,
it is always above or below the conventional lines of what fools call
the /beau-ideal/. What power is it that destroys them? Passion. Every
passion in Paris resolves into two terms: gold and pleasure. Now, do
you not breathe again? Do you not feel air and space purified? Here is
neither labor nor suffering. The soaring arch of gold has reached the
summit. From the lowest gutters, where its stream commences, from the
little shops where it is stopped by puny coffer-dams, from the heart
of the counting-houses and great workshops, where its volume is that
of ingots--gold, in the shape of dowries and inheritances, guided by
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: As I recall it the difference is due in some part to the
counter-attraction of that portion of the earth's crust
directly opposite the spot upon the face of Pellucidar
at which one's calculations are being made. Be that as
it may, it always seemed to me that I moved with greater
speed and agility within Pellucidar than upon the outer
surface--there was a certain airy lightness of step that was
most pleasing, and a feeling of bodily detachment which
I can only compare with that occasionally experienced in dreams.
And as I crossed Phutra's flower-bespangled plain that time
I seemed almost to fly, though how much of the sensation
At the Earth's Core |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Cavalry General by Xenophon: man of invention, ready of device to turn all circumstances to
account, so as to give at one time a small body of cavalry the
appearance of a larger, and again a large the likeness of a smaller
body; he should have the craft to appear absent when close at hand,
and within striking distance when a long way off; he should know
exactly not only how to steal an enemy's position, but by a master
stroke of cunning[1] to spirit his own cavalry away, and, when least
expected, deliver his attack. Another excellent specimen of
inventiveness may be seen in the general's ability, while holding a
weak position himself, to conjure up so lively an apprehension in the
enemy that he will not dream of attacking; or conversely, when, being
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