| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: moment. So much of our early gladness vanishes utterly from our
memory: we can never recall the joy with which we laid our heads
on our mother's bosom or rode on our father's back in childhood.
Doubtless that joy is wrought up into our nature, as the sunlight
of long-past mornings is wrought up in the soft mellowness of the
apricot, but it is gone for ever from our imagination, and we can
only BELIEVE in the joy of childhood. But the first glad moment
in our first love is a vision which returns to us to the last, and
brings with it a thrill of feeling intense and special as the
recurrent sensation of a sweet odour breathed in a far-off hour of
happiness. It is a memory that gives a more exquisite touch to
 Adam Bede |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: doing the same himself."
"Look here, mates," said Jerry; "the gentleman offered me half a crown extra,
but I didn't take it; 'twas quite pay enough for me to see how glad he was
to catch that train; and if Jack and I choose to have a quick run
now and then to please ourselves, that's our business and not yours."
"Well," said Larry, "you'll never be a rich man."
"Most likely not," said Jerry; "but I don't know that I shall be
the less happy for that. I have heard the commandments read
a great many times and I never noticed that any of them said,
`Thou shalt be rich'; and there are a good many curious things
said in the New Testament about rich men that I think would make me
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Deep in a dream of love,
True love that never dies!
Bowers on bowers rise,
Soft tendrils twine;
While from the press escapes,
Born of the juicy grapes,
Foaming, the wine;
And as the current flows
O'er the bright stones it goes,--
Leaving the hilly lands
Far, far behind,--
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