| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: himself that if he were weak enough to help this compatriot (to him
utterly unknown) he should have the whole department prone upon him,
his bell-rope would break, his valet leave him, he should have
difficulties with his landlord about the stairway, and the other
lodgers would assuredly complain of the smell of garlic pervading the
house. Consequently, he looked at his visitor as a butcher looks at a
sheep whose throat he intends to cut. But whether the rustic
comprehended the stab of that glance or not, he went on to say (so
Massol told me), 'I've as much ambition as other men. I will never go
back to my native place, if I ever do go back, unless I am a rich man.
Paris is the antechamber of Paradise. They tell me that you who write
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Apology by Xenophon: [12] L. Dindorf cf. Dio Chrys. "Or." 28, {anagke gar auto en
probainonti anti men kallistou aiskhrotero gignesthai k.t.l.}
[13] {apoteleisthai}. In "Mem." IV. viii. 8, {epiteleisthai}.
[14] Or, "God of his good favour vouchsafes as my protector that I
should," etc. For {proxenei} cf. "Anab." VI. v. 14; Soph. "O. C."
465, and "O. T." 1483; and Prof. Jebb's notes ad loc. "the god's
kindly offices grant to me that I should lose my life."
[15] Cf. Plat. "Phaed." 66.
"No doubt," he added, "the gods were right in opposing me at that time
(touching the inquiry, what I was to say in my defence),[16] when you
all thought the great thing was to discover some means of
The Apology |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: is a lost man, though he be the cleanest, soberest, most diligent,
most veracious, most trustworthy man in the county. Dickens's
instinct for detecting social cankers never served him better than
when he shewed us Mrs Heep teaching her son to "be umble," knowing
that if he carried out that precept he might be pretty well anything
else he liked. The maintenance of deference to our wills becomes a
mania which will carry the best of us to any extremity. We will allow
a village of Egyptian fellaheen or Indian tribesmen to live the lowest
life they please among themselves without molestation; but let one of
them slay an Englishman or even strike him on the strongest
provocation, and straightway we go stark mad, burning and destroying,
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