| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: who bent to the storm, and dreamed only of distinguishing herself. So,
she boldly hung the portrait of Charlotte Corday on the walls of her
poor salon at Cinq-Cygne, and crowned it with oak-leaves. She
corresponded by messenger with her twin cousins, in defiance of the
law, which punished the act, when discovered, with death. The
messenger, who risked his life, brought back the answers. Laurence
lived only, after the catastrophes at Troyes, for the triumph of the
royal cause. After soberly judging Monsieur and Madame d'Hauteserre
(who lived with her at the chateau de Cinq-Cygne), and recognizing
their honest, but stolid natures, she put them outside the lines of
her own life. She had, moreover, too good a mind and too sound a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: man is called selfish if he lives in the manner that seems to him
most suitable for the full realisation of his own personality; if,
in fact, the primary aim of his life is self-development. But this
is the way in which everyone should live. Selfishness is not
living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one
wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's lives
alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at
creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness
recognises infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts
it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it. It is not selfish to think for
oneself. A man who does not think for himself does not think at
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: fellow?" with her taunts; with her brazen and sinister scolding.
She was of the true Jacobus stock, and no mistake.
Directly I got away from the girl I called myself many hard names.
What folly was this? I would ask myself. It was like being the
slave of some depraved habit. And I returned to her with my head
clear, my heart certainly free, not even moved by pity for that
castaway (she was as much of a castaway as any one ever wrecked on
a desert island), but as if beguiled by some extraordinary promise.
Nothing more unworthy could be imagined. The recollection of that
tremulous whisper when I gripped her shoulder with one hand and
held a plate of chicken with the other was enough to make me break
'Twixt Land & Sea |
