| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dreams by Olive Schreiner: listened. Her little children plucked her gown; she did not see them; she
was listening to some sound, but she did not stir.
The revels grew higher. Men drank till they could drink no longer, and lay
their heads upon the table sleeping heavily. Women who could dance no more
leaned back on the benches with their heads against their lovers'
shoulders. Little children, sick with wine, lay down upon the edges of
their mothers' robes. Sometimes, a man rose suddenly, and as he staggered
struck the tables and overthrew the benches; some leaned upon the
balustrades sick unto death. Here and there one rose who staggered to the
wine jars and lay down beside them. He turned the wine tap, but sleep
overcame him as he lay there, and the wine ran out.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon: company with jests.[31] Now all is changed, and who will be at pains
to ask me out to dinner any more? I might as well pretend to be
immortal as to be serious. Nor will any one invite me in hopes of
reclining at my board in his turn. Everyone knows so serious a thing
as dinner in my house was never heard of; it's against the rules--the
more's the pity.
[30] Cf. "Cyrop." VI. i. 3; Plat. "Laws," 677 C.
[31] Lit. "by the laughter which I stirred in them."
And as he spoke he blew his nose and snuffled, uttering the while so
truly dolorous a moan[32] that everybody fell to soothing him. "They
would all laugh again another day," they said, and so implored him to
The Symposium |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: Nemours was more feared nor, in a way, more deferred to than Goupil.
Strong in the claims made for him by his very ugliness, he had the
odious style of wit peculiar to men who allow themselves all license,
and he used it to gratify the bitterness of his life-long envy. He
wrote the satirical couplets sung during the carnival, organized
charivaris, and was himself a "little journal" of the gossip of the
town. Dionis, who was clever and insincere, and for that reason timid,
kept Goupil as much through fear as for his keen mind and thorough
knowledge of all the interests of the town. But the master so
distrusted his clerk that he himself kept the accounts, refused to let
him live in his house, held him at arm's length, and never confided
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