| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: Clara Bell
To Sofka
"Have you observed, mademoiselle, that the painters and
sculptors of the Middle Ages, when they placed two figures in
adoration, one on each side of a fair Saint, never failed to
give them a family likeness? When you here see your name among
those that are dear to me, and under whose auspices I place my
works, remember that touching harmony, and you will see in
this not so much an act of homage as an expression of the
brotherly affection of your devoted servant,
"DE BALZAC."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: faculties of its inhabitants and renders them incapable of social
organisation or extended empire; while to the enervating heat of
eastern countries was due that want of spirit and bravery which
then, as now, was the characteristic of the population in that
quarter of the globe.
Thucydides has shown the causal connection between political
revolutions and the fertility of the soil, but goes a step farther
and points out the psychological influences on a people's character
exercised by the various extremes of climate - in both cases the
first appearance of a most valuable form of historical criticism.
To the development of Dialectic, as to God, intervals of time are
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of War by Sun Tzu: example of doomed spies, Ho Shih mentions the prisoners released
by Pan Ch`ao in his campaign against Yarkand. (See p. 132.) He
also refers to T`ang Chien, who in 630 A.D. was sent by T`ai
Tsung to lull the Turkish Kahn Chieh-li into fancied security,
until Li Ching was able to deliver a crushing blow against him.
Chang Yu says that the Turks revenged themselves by killing T`ang
Chien, but this is a mistake, for we read in both the old and the
New T`ang History (ch. 58, fol. 2 and ch. 89, fol. 8
respectively) that he escaped and lived on until 656. Li I-chi
played a somewhat similar part in 203 B.C., when sent by the King
of Han to open peaceful negotiations with Ch`i. He has certainly
The Art of War |
