| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: of stout lads who still looked bashful, as became youths recently
released from the seminary. Their firm healthy faces were covered with
the first down of manhood, down which had, as yet, never known a
razor. They were greatly discomfited by such a reception from their
father, and stood motionless with eyes fixed upon the ground.
"Stand still, stand still! let me have a good look at you," he
continued, turning them around. "How long your gaberdines are! What
gaberdines! There never were such gaberdines in the world before. Just
run, one of you! I want to see whether you will not get entangled in
the skirts, and fall down."
"Don't laugh, don't laugh, father!" said the eldest lad at length.
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: than a man's thigh. They were firmly planted in the ground, and
upon them the strokes of the broadsword were directed.
At Devlen the pels stood just back of the open and covered
tilting courts and the archery ranges, and thither those lads not
upon household duty were marched every morning excepting Fridays
and Sundays, and were there exercised under the direction of Sir
James Lee and two assistants. The whole company was divided into
two, sometimes into three parties, each of which took its turn at
the exercise, delivering at the word of command the various
strokes, feints, attacks, and retreats as the instructors
ordered.
Men of Iron |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: a love so vast and glorious, do we prize it at its just worth. And if
a man who has once possessed this love shuts himself out from it by
his own act and deed, and sinks to some loveless marriage; if by some
incident, hidden in the obscurity of married life, the woman with whom
he hoped to know the same felicity makes it clear that it will never
be revived for him; if, with the sweetness of divine love still on his
lips, he has dealt a deadly wound to /her/, his wife in truth, whom he
forsook for a social chimera,--then he must either die or take refuge
in a materialistic, selfish, and heartless philosophy, from which
impassioned souls shrink in horror.
As for Mme. de Beauseant, she doubtless did not imagine that her
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