| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: being so highly organized? If he really is a victim to the malady as
yet unstudied in all its aspects, which is known simply as madness, I
am inclined to attribute it to his passion. His studies and his mode
of life had strung his powers and faculties to a degree of energy
beyond which the least further strain was too much for nature; Love
was enough to crack them, or to raise them to a new form of expression
which we are maligning perhaps, by ticketing it without due knowledge.
In fact, he may perhaps have regarded the joys of marriage as an
obstacle to the perfection of his inner man and his flight towards
spiritual spheres."
"My dear sir," said the old man, after listening to me with attention,
Louis Lambert |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: refused to recognize the Bishops appointed by the authorities with the
consent of the Pope. This little body of the faithful was called the
Little Church; and those within its fold, like the Jansenists, led the
strictly ordered lives that appear to be a first necessity of
existence in all proscribed and persecuted sects. Many Jansenist
families had joined the Little Church. The family to which this young
girl belonged had embraced the equally rigid doctrines of both these
Puritanisms, tenets which impart a stern dignity to the character and
mien of those who hold them. It is the nature of positive doctrine to
exaggerate the importance of the most ordinary actions of life by
connecting them with ideas of a future existence. This is the source
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs: what you like; but as for me, I'm going to pull off every
rag and get good and dry."
The girl had already quitted the room and now The
Kid turned and followed her. Bridge shook his head.
"I'll bet the little beggar never was away from his
mother before in his life," he mused; "why the mere
thought of undressing in front of a strange man made
him turn red--and posing as The Oskaloosa Kid! Bless
my soul; but he's a humorist--a regular, natural born
one."
Bridge found that his clothing had dried to some ex-
The Oakdale Affair |
