| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: short, the thousand nothings to be admired and studied with delight by
loungers, in spite of the porter's broom which pretends to be sweeping
out the gateway. Then there's the talkative refugee, who complains and
converses with the porter while he rests on his broom like a grenadier
on his musket; or the pauper wayfarer, curled against the wall
indifferent to the condition of his rags, long used, alas, to contact
with the streets; or the learned pedestrian who studies, spells, and
reads the posters on the walls without finishing them; or the smiling
pedestrian who makes fun of others to whom some street fatality has
happened, who laughs at the muddy women, and makes grimaces at those
of either sex who are looking from the windows; and the silent being
Ferragus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: stout and squat, whose false front was frizzed into points of
interrogation, proceeded, in a thick voice, to relate to him all the
particular circumstances, even the most secret, of his past life: she
told him his tastes, his habits, his character; the thoughts of his
childhood; everything that had influenced his life; a marriage broken
off, why, with whom, the exact description of the woman he had loved;
and, finally, the place he came from, his lawsuit, etc.
Gazonal at first thought it was a hoax prepared by his companions; but
the absolute impossibility of such a conspiracy appeared to him almost
as soon as the idea itself, and he sat speechless before that truly
infernal power, the incarnation of which borrowed from humanity a form
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: an advantage for a man to live on scanty, unwholesome food, to wear
ragged, unwholesome clothes, to sleep in horrid, unwholesome
dwellings, and a disadvantage for a man to live under healthy,
pleasant, and decent conditions. Such a view would have been wrong
there and then, and would, of course, be still more wrong now and
in England; for as man moves northward the material necessities of
life become of more vital importance, and our society is infinitely
more complex, and displays far greater extremes of luxury and
pauperism than any society of the antique world. What Jesus meant,
was this. He said to man, 'You have a wonderful personality.
Develop it. Be yourself. Don't imagine that your perfection lies
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