| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: pretty foot, the foot of an aristocrat.
She habitually wore simple checked cotton dresses; but on Sundays and
in the evening her mother allowed her silk. The cut of her frocks,
made at Besancon, almost made her ugly, while her mother tried to
borrow grace, beauty, and elegance from Paris fashions; for through
Monsieur de Soulas she procured the smallest trifles of her dress from
thence. Rosalie had never worn a pair of silk stockings or thin boots,
but always cotton stockings and leather shoes. On high days she was
dressed in a muslin frock, her hair plainly dressed, and had bronze
kid shoes.
This education, and her own modest demeanor, hid in Rosalie a spirit
Albert Savarus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town
was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine,
a lurid glare under the stars.
"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark
places of the earth."
He was the only man of us who still "followed the sea."
The worst that could be said of him was that he did not represent
his class. He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most
seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life.
Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is
always with them--the ship; and so is their country--the sea.
Heart of Darkness |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: All this may be stamped on it; and that house receive
such an air as to make its owner be set down as the great
landholder of the parish by every creature travelling
the road; especially as there is no real squire's house
to dispute the point--a circumstance, between ourselves,
to enhance the value of such a situation in point
of privilege and independence beyond all calculation.
_You_ think with me, I hope" (turning with a softened
voice to Fanny). "Have you ever seen the place?"
Fanny gave a quick negative, and tried to hide her interest
in the subject by an eager attention to her brother,
Mansfield Park |
