| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: forgotten our relations; I have always remembered, throughout my
long wanderings, the little wooden seat--
Eugenie rose as if she were sitting on live coals, and went away and
sat down on the stone steps of the court.
--the little wooden seat where we vowed to love each other
forever, the passage, the gray hall, my attic chamber, and the
night when, by your delicate kindness, you made my future easier
to me. Yes, these recollections sustained my courage; I said in my
heart that you were thinking of me at the hour we had agreed upon.
Have you always looked at the clouds at nine o'clock? Yes, I am
sure of it. I cannot betray so true a friendship,--no, I must not
Eugenie Grandet |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: The full brain hammered hot with too much thinking,
The vexed heart over-worn with too much aching, --
This weary jangling of conjoined affairs
Made out of elements that have no end,
And all confused at once, I understand,
Is not what makes a man to live forever.
O no, not now! He'll not be going now:
There'll be time yet for God knows what explosions
Before he goes. He'll stay awhile. Just wait:
Just wait a year or two for Cleopatra,
For she's to be a balsam and a comfort;
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James: Moreen would never allow Paula and Amy to receive alone. These
young ladies were not at all timid, but it was just the safeguards
that made them so candidly free. It was a houseful of Bohemians
who wanted tremendously to be Philistines.
In one respect, however, certainly they achieved no rigour - they
were wonderfully amiable and ecstatic about Morgan. It was a
genuine tenderness, an artless admiration, equally strong in each.
They even praised his beauty, which was small, and were as afraid
of him as if they felt him of finer clay. They spoke of him as a
little angel and a prodigy - they touched on his want of health
with long vague faces. Pemberton feared at first an extravagance
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