| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: pause but that required for carrying out our plan. Instead of
loitering about the streets, we both came in, each armed with a novel.
We read with our ears open. And in the perfect silence of our attic
rooms, we heard the even, dull sound of a sleeping man breathing.
"He is asleep," said I to Juste, noticing this fact.
"At seven o'clock!" replied the Doctor.
This was the name by which I called Juste, and he called me the Keeper
of the Seals.
"A man must be wretched indeed to sleep as much as our neighbor!"
cried I, jumping on to the chest of drawers with a knife in my hand,
to which a corkscrew was attached.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: being the expression of the other; and in certain Greek states, especially
at Sparta and Thebes, the honourable attachment of a youth to an elder man
was a part of his education. The 'army of lovers and their beloved who
would be invincible if they could be united by such a tie' (Symp.), is not
a mere fiction of Plato's, but seems actually to have existed at Thebes in
the days of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, if we may believe writers cited
anonymously by Plutarch, Pelop. Vit. It is observable that Plato never in
the least degree excuses the depraved love of the body (compare Charm.;
Rep.; Laws; Symp.; and once more Xenophon, Mem.), nor is there any Greek
writer of mark who condones or approves such connexions. But owing partly
to the puzzling nature of the subject these friendships are spoken of by
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: granted that they're going to get whatever they want,
and that we almost always took it for granted that we
shouldn't. Only, I wonder--the thing one's so certain
of in advance: can it ever make one's heart beat as
wildly?"
It was the day after their arrival in Paris, and the
spring sunshine held Archer in his open window, above
the wide silvery prospect of the Place Vendome. One
of the things he had stipulated--almost the only one--
when he had agreed to come abroad with Dallas, was
that, in Paris, he shouldn't be made to go to one of the
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