| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: so full of misery and hard work, were to me a golden period. I dreaded
holidays. My mother herself preferred to come and see me. When I had
finished my philosophical course and was forced to return home and
become my father's clerk, I could not endure it more than a few
months; my mind, bewildered by the fever of adolescence, threatened to
give way. On a sad autumn evening as I was walking alone with my
mother along the Boulevard Bourdon, then one of the most melancholy
parts of Paris, I poured my heart into hers, and I told her that I saw
no possible life before me except in the Church. My tastes, my ideas,
all that I most loved would be continually thwarted so long as my
father lived. Under the cassock of a priest he would be forced to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: which had been their resting-place for above eleven years; but
they knew that they were pilgrims and strangers here below, and
looked not much on these things, but lifted up their eyes to
Heaven, their dearest country, where God hath prepared for them a
city (Heb. xi. 16), and therein quieted their spirits. When they
came to Delfs- Haven they found the ship and all things ready;
and such of their friends as could not come with them followed
after them, and sundry came from Amsterdam to see them shipt, and
to take their leaves of them. One night was spent with little
sleep with the most, but with friendly entertainment and
Christian discourse, and other real expressions of true Christian
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Poems by T. S. Eliot: Half-past two,
The street-lamp said,
"Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
Slips out its tongue
And devours a morsel of rancid butter."
So the hand of the child, automatic,
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along
the quay.
I could see nothing behind that child's eye.
I have seen eyes in the street
Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
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