| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: There is something so infectious and childlike in the pleasantries of
youth, that Marcas smiled again in reply.
"What incidents can have given you this detestable philosophy?" asked
I.
"I forgot once more that chance is the result of an immense equation
of which we know not all the factors. When we start from zero to work
up to the unit, the chances are incalculable. To ambitious men Paris
is an immense roulette table, and every young man fancies he can hit
on a successful progression of numbers."
He offered us the tobacco I had brought that we might smoke with him;
the Doctor went to fetch our pipes; Marcas filled his, and then he
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Jungle Tales of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: later the youth dropped lightly to the broad head of his
old friend. Then stretching himself at full length,
he drummed with his bare toes upon the thick hide, and as
his fingers scratched the more tender surfaces beneath the
great ears, he talked to Tantor of the gossip of the jungle
as though the great beast understood every word that he said.
Much there was which Tarzan could make Tantor understand,
and though the small talk of the wild was beyond
the great, gray dreadnaught of the jungle, he stood
with blinking eyes and gently swaying trunk as though
drinking in every word of it with keenest appreciation.
The Jungle Tales of Tarzan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: They may be.
Perhaps, I said, about half, or possibly, altogether, right, if their
meaning were rightly apprehended by us. For the more a bad man has to do
with a bad man, and the more nearly he is brought into contact with him,
the more he will be likely to hate him, for he injures him; and injurer and
injured cannot be friends. Is not that true?
Yes, he said.
Then one half of the saying is untrue, if the wicked are like one another?
That is true.
But the real meaning of the saying, as I imagine, is, that the good are
like one another, and friends to one another; and that the bad, as is often
Lysis |
