| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: "Don't you see, my dear fellow," returned Cerizet, "that between you
and me there ought to be THIS,--" and he struck his heart,--"of which
you have none. As soon as you thought you had a lever on us, you have
tried to knock us over. I saved you from the horrors of starvation and
vermin! You'll die like the idiot you are. We put you on the high-road
to fortune; we gave you a fine social skin and a position in which you
could grasp the future--and look what you do! NOW I know you! and from
this time forth, we shall go armed."
"Then it is war between us!" exclaimed Theodose.
"You fired first," returned Cerizet.
"If you pull me down, farewell to your hopes and plans; if you don't
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: more civility and amiable attention because each was undermining her.
Her brother, though no longer able to be on the scene of action, was
well aware of what was going on, and as soon as he perceived that his
sister's hopes were killed he became an implacable and terrible
antagonist to the Rogrons.
Every one will immediately picture to themselves Mademoiselle Habert
when they know that if she had not kept an institution for young
ladies she would still have had the air of a school-mistress. School-
mistresses have a way of their own in putting on their caps. Just as
old Englishwomen have acquired a monopoly in turbans, school-
mistresses have a monopoly of these caps. Flowers nod above the frame-
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: fellow-creatures, - a melancholy, lean degeneration of the
human character.
"As for the dispute about solitude and society," he thus sums
up: "Any comparison is impertinent. It is an idling down on
the plain at the base of the mountain instead of climbing
steadily to its top. Of course you will be glad of all the
society you can get to go up with? Will you go to glory with
me? is the burden of the song. It is not that we love to be
alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar the
company grows thinner and thinner till there is none at all.
It is either the tribune on the plain, a sermon on the mount,
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