| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: the passage in the DIVINE COMEDY where beneath the dreary marsh lie
those who were 'sullen in the sweet air,' saying for ever and ever
through their sighs -
'Tristi fummo
Nell aer dolce che dal sol s'allegra.'
I knew the church condemned ACCIDIA, but the whole idea seemed to
me quite fantastic, just the sort of sin, I fancied, a priest who
knew nothing about real life would invent. Nor could I understand
how Dante, who says that 'sorrow remarries us to God,' could have
been so harsh to those who were enamoured of melancholy, if any
such there really were. I had no idea that some day this would
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: 'This venal doctor seems quite a desideratum,' he reflected. 'I
want him first to give me a certificate that my uncle is dead, so
that I may get the leather business; and then that he's
alive--but here we are again at the incompatible interests!' And
he returned to his tabulation:
Bad. Good.
4. I have almost no money. 4. But there is plenty in the bank.
5. Yes, but I can't get the money in the bank.
5. But--well, that seems unhappily to be the case.
6. I have left the bill for eight hundred pounds in Uncle
Joseph's pocket.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.
When the eyes of the Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral
image (which, with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to
sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was
seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder
either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his brow reddened
with rage.
"Who dares,"--he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood
near him--"who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery?
Seize him and unmask him--that we may know whom we have to hang, at
sunrise, from the battlements!"
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