| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: in whom passion takes the form of constancy, absence has the same
effect as the sufferings of the early Christians, which strengthened
their faith and made God visible to them. In hearts that abound in
love are there not incessant longings for a desired object, to which
the glowing fire of our dreams gives higher value and a deeper tint?
Are we not conscious of instigations which give to the beloved
features the beauty of the ideal by inspiring them with thought? The
past, dwelt on in all its details becomes magnified; the future teems
with hope. When two hearts filled with these electric clouds meet each
other, their interview is like the welcome storm which revives the
earth and stimulates it with the swift lightnings of the thunderbolt.
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville: them; for if they had lost the savour of the apples, they should
die anon. They ne be not full reasonable, but they be simple and
bestial.
After that is another isle, where the folk be all skinned rough
hair, as a rough beast, save only the face and the palm of the
hand. These folk go as well under the water of the sea, as they do
above the land all dry. And they eat both flesh and fish all raw.
In this isle is a great river that is well a two mile and an half
of breadth that is clept Beaumare.
And from that river a fifteen journeys in length, going by the
deserts of the tother side of the river - whoso might go it, for I
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: In my particular case the consolatory topics were close at hand,
and, indeed, had suggested themselves to my meditations a
considerable time before it was requisite to use them. In view
of my previous weariness of office, and vague thoughts of
resignation, my fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who
should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and although
beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered. In the
Custom-House, as before in the Old Manse, I had spent three years
-- a term long enough to rest a weary brain: long enough to break
off old intellectual habits, and make room for new ones: long
enough, and too long, to have lived in an unnatural state, doing
The Scarlet Letter |
