| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde: my carriage is waiting at the corner of the street. You must come
with me and drive straight home.
[LADY WINDERMERE throws off her cloak and flings it on the sofa.]
What are you doing?
LADY WINDERMERE. Mrs. Erlynne - if you had not come here, I would
have gone back. But now that I see you, I feel that nothing in the
whole world would induce me to live under the same roof as Lord
Windermere. You fill me with horror. There is something about you
that stirs the wildest - rage within me. And I know why you are
here. My husband sent you to lure me back that I might serve as a
blind to whatever relations exist between you and him.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lady Susan by Jane Austen: myself under the necessity of delaying that hour beyond the time originally
fixed. Do not think me unkind for such an exercise of my power, nor accuse
me of instability without first hearing my reasons. In the course of my
journey from Churchhill I had ample leisure for reflection on the present
state of our affairs, and every review has served to convince me that they
require a delicacy and cautiousness of conduct to which we have hitherto
been too little attentive. We have been hurried on by our feelings to a
degree of precipitation which ill accords with the claims of our friends or
the opinion of the world. We have been unguarded in forming this hasty
engagement, but we must not complete the imprudence by ratifying it while
there is so much reason to fear the connection would be opposed by those
Lady Susan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: voice, laid bare by a divine finger which points to the past of its
whole existence as the source of its given expression. You clothe your
women with delicate skins and glorious draperies of hair, but where is
the blood which begets the passion or the peace of their souls, and is
the cause of what you call 'effects'? Your saint is a dark woman; but
this, my poor Porbus, belongs to a fair one. Your figures are pale,
colored phantoms, which you present to our eyes; and you call that
painting! art! Because you make something which looks more like a
woman than a house, you think you have touched the goal; proud of not
being obliged to write "currus venustus" or "pulcher homo" on the
frame of your picture, you think yourselves majestic artists like our
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