| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: more than thirty thousand Hellenes.
You are mocking, Socrates, said Agathon, and ere long you and I will have
to determine who bears off the palm of wisdom--of this Dionysus shall be
the judge; but at present you are better occupied with supper.
Socrates took his place on the couch, and supped with the rest; and then
libations were offered, and after a hymn had been sung to the god, and
there had been the usual ceremonies, they were about to commence drinking,
when Pausanias said, And now, my friends, how can we drink with least
injury to ourselves? I can assure you that I feel severely the effect of
yesterday's potations, and must have time to recover; and I suspect that
most of you are in the same predicament, for you were of the party
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: Father Goriot
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Ball at Sceaux
The Interdiction
A Study of Woman
Another Study of Woman
The Magic Skin
A Daughter of Eve
The Gondreville Mystery
The Firm of Nucingen
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: out so many hundred thousand dollars' worth of such and such an
article; there so many million other things; this house was worth
so many million dollars; that one so many million, more or less.
It was like listening to a child babbling of its hoard of shells.
It was like watching a fool playing with buttons. But I was
expected to do more than listen or watch. He demanded that I
should admire; and the utmost that I could say was:--"Are these
things so? Then I am very sorry for you."
That made him angry, and he said that insular envy made me
unresponsive. So, you see, I could not make him understand.
About four and a half hours after Adam was turned out of the
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