| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: (since no other object exists),--to seduce man in order to
possess him. Imagine courses of instruction for women and
feminine science without men,--that is, learned women, and men
not KNOWING them as learned. Oh, no! No education, no
instruction can change woman as long as her highest ideal shall
be marriage and not virginity, freedom from sensuality. Until
that time she will remain a serf. One need only imagine,
forgetting the universality of the case, the conditions in which
our young girls are brought up, to avoid astonishment at the
debauchery of the women of our upper classes. It is the opposite
that would cause astonishment.
The Kreutzer Sonata |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: spectator.
At this particular moment the scene was brightened by the fleeting
glow with which Nature delights at times in heightening the beauty of
her imperishable creations. While the detachment was crossing the
valley, the rising sun had slowly scattered the fleecy mists which
float above the meadows of a September morning. As the soldiers turned
to look back, an invisible hand seemed to lift from the landscape the
last of these veils--a delicate vapor, like a diaphanous gauze through
which the glow of precious jewels excites our curiosity. Not a cloud
could be seen on the wide horizon to mark by its silvery whiteness
that the vast blue arch was the firmament; it seemed, on the contrary,
The Chouans |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: But he died childless. Are you honest, boy?
Then be not spendthrift of your honesty,
But keep it to yourself; in Padua
Men think that honesty is ostentatious, so
It is not of the fashion. Look at these lords.
COUNT BARDI
[aside]
Here is some bitter arrow for us, sure.
DUKE
Why, every man among them has his price,
Although, to do them justice, some of them
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