| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic
wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour,
metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been
poisoned. Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed's
pardon; but I knew, partly from experience and partly from instinct,
that was the way to make her repulse me with double scorn, thereby
re-exciting every turbulent impulse of my nature.
I would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce
speaking; fain find nourishment for some less fiendish feeling than
that of sombre indignation. I took a book--some Arabian tales; I
sat down and endeavoured to read. I could make no sense of the
Jane Eyre |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: it the dark-browed Cossack maiden, running timidly across it on quick
young feet. There is the pole above the well, with the waggon wheel
fastened to its top, rising solitary against the sky; already the
level which they have traversed appears a hill in the distance, and
now all has disappeared. Farewell, childhood, games, all, all,
farewell!
CHAPTER II
All three horsemen rode in silence. Old Taras's thoughts were far
away: before him passed his youth, his years--the swift-flying years,
over which the Cossack always weeps, wishing that his life might be
all youth. He wondered whom of his former comrades he should meet at
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: chief a predilection for Auvergnats, and especially for water
carriers; but as Desplein took a sort of pride in his cures at
the Hotel-Dieu, the pupil saw nothing very strange in that.
One day, as he crossed the Place Saint-Sulpice, Bianchon caught
sight of his master going into the church at about nine in the
morning. Desplein, who at that time never went a step without his
cab, was on foot, and slipped in by the door in the Rue du Petit-
Lion, as if he were stealing into some house of ill fame. The
house surgeon, naturally possessed by curiosity, knowing his
master's opinions, and being himself a rabid follower of Cabanis
(Cabaniste en dyable, with the y, which in Rabelais seems to
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