| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: the way to ring the changes, and giving you a sight of the
mechanism of the social machine; but your first fright will go
off like a conscript's terror on the battlefield. You will grow
used to regarding men as common soldiers who have made up their
minds to lose their lives for some self-constituted king. Times
have altered strangely. Once you could say to a bravo, 'Here are
a hundred crowns; go and kill Monsieur So-and-so for me,' and you
could sup quietly after turning some one off into the dark for
the least thing in the world. But nowadays I propose to put you
in the way of a handsome fortune; you have only to nod your head,
it won't compromise you in any way, and you hesitate. 'Tis an
Father Goriot |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence: If he had made up his mind, nothing on earth would alter him.
Mrs. Morel was tired. She began to give up at last; she had finished.
She was in the way.
He went on determinedly. He realised more or less what his
mother felt. It only hardened his soul. He made himself callous
towards her; but it was like being callous to his own health.
It undermined him quickly; yet he persisted.
He lay back in the rocking-chair at Willey Farm one evening.
He had been talking to Miriam for some weeks, but had not come to
the point. Now he said suddenly:
"I am twenty-four, almost."
Sons and Lovers |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: have come into existence?
The lesser.
Then the least is the first? And that is the one?
Yes.
Then the one of all things that have number is the first to come into
being; but all other things have also number, being plural and not
singular.
They have.
And since it came into being first it must be supposed to have come into
being prior to the others, and the others later; and the things which came
into being later, are younger than that which preceded them? And so the
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