| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: great depth of heart to devote himself in silence and obscurity to a
woman. In such a heart is the worship of love for love's sake only--
sublime avarice, sublime because ever generous and founded on the
mysterious existence of the principles of creation. EFFECT is nature,
and nature is enchanting; it belongs to man, to the poet, the painter,
the lover. But CAUSE, to a few privileged souls and to certain mighty
thinkers, is superior to nature. Cause is God. In the sphere of causes
live the Newtons and all such thinkers as Laplace, Kepler, Descartes,
Malebranche, Spinoza, Buffon; also the true poets and solitarys of the
second Christian century, and the Saint Teresas of Spain, and such
sublime ecstatics. All human sentiments bear analogy to these
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: getting on. They were standing to take breath, so I ran towards
them; but on seeing me coming, this rascal, too, whipped round
his horse and disappeared in the wood, and left us victors.
The first thing I did--and I remember it to this day with
pleasure--was to plunge my hand into my pocket, take out half of
all the money I had in the world, and press it on the man who had
fought for me so stoutly. In my joy I could have kissed him! It
was not only that I had escaped defeat by the skin of my teeth--
and his good sword; but I knew, and felt, and thrilled with the
knowledge, that the fight had, in a sense, redeemed my character.
He was wounded in two places, and I had a scratch or two, and had
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: To the east of Casterbridge lay moors and meadows through
which much water flowed. The wanderer in this direction who
should stand still for a few moments on a quiet night, might
hear singular symphonies from these waters, as from a
lampless orchestra, all playing in their sundry tones from
near and far parts of the moor. At a hole in a rotten weir
they executed a recitative; where a tributary brook fell
over a stone breastwork they trilled cheerily; under an arch
they performed a metallic cymballing, and at Durnover Hole
they hissed. The spot at which their instrumentation rose
loudest was a place called Ten Hatches, whence during high
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
