| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: lines of the mouth, that the toothless old fellow was more given to
the bottle than the trencher. His thin white beard gave a threatening
expression to his profile by the stiffness of its short bristles. The
eyes, too small for his enormous face, and sloping like those of a
pig, betrayed cunning and also laziness; but at this particular moment
they were gleaming with the intent look he cast upon the river. The
sole garments of this curious figure were an old blouse, formerly
blue, and trousers of the coarse burlap used in Paris to wrap bales.
All city people would have shuddered at the sight of his broken
sabots, without even a wisp of straw to stop the cracks; and it is
very certain that the blouse and the trousers had no money value at
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Talisman by Walter Scott: accuracy, through the various secret passages and stairs by which
they had ascended, until at length they found themselves in the
outward cell of the hermit's cavern.
"The condemned criminal is restored to his dungeon, reprieved
from one miserable day to another, until his awful Judge shall at
length appoint the well-deserved sentence to be carried into
execution."
As the hermit spoke these words, he laid aside the veil with
which his eyes had been bound, and looked at it with a suppressed
and hollow sigh. No sooner had he restored it to the crypt from
which he had caused the Scot to bring it, than he said hastily
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: Is not He who made misery wiser than thou art? Wherefore I praise
thee not for this that thou hast done, but I bid thee ride back to
the Palace and make thy face glad, and put on the raiment that
beseemeth a king, and with the crown of gold I will crown thee, and
the sceptre of pearl will I place in thy hand. And as for thy
dreams, think no more of them. The burden of this world is too
great for one man to bear, and the world's sorrow too heavy for one
heart to suffer.'
'Sayest thou that in this house?' said the young King, and he
strode past the Bishop, and climbed up the steps of the altar, and
stood before the image of Christ.
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