| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: underwent a fatal change,--a change which began so gradually that at
first Madame Claes did not think it necessary to inquire the cause.
One night her husband went to bed with a mind so preoccupied that she
felt it incumbent on her to respect his mood. Her womanly delicacy and
her submissive habits always led her to wait for Balthazar's
confidence; which, indeed, was assured to her by so constant an
affection that she had never had the slightest opening for jealousy.
Though certain of obtaining an answer whenever she should make the
inquiry, she still retained enough of the earlier impressions of her
life to dread a refusal. Besides, the moral malady of her husband had
its phases, and only came by slow degrees to the intolerable point at
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: her renounce the earl, who, I believe, is the devil incarnate?
Will you undertake that?"
"Will I undertake," said the friar, "to make Trent run westward,
or to make flame burn downward, or to make a tree grow with its head
in the earth and its root in the air?"
"So then," said the baron, "a girl's mind is as hard to change as nature and
the elements, and it is easier to make her renounce the devil than a lover.
Are you a match for the devil, and no match for a man?"
"My warfare," said the friar, "is not of this world.
I am militant not against man, but the devil, who goes about
seeking what he may devour."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: The ouzel's haunt, the wild bee's pasturage,
For round its rim great creamy lilies float
Through their flat leaves in verdant anchorage,
Each cup a white-sailed golden-laden boat
Steered by a dragon-fly, - be not afraid
To leave this wan and wave-kissed shore, surely the place was made
For lovers such as we; the Cyprian Queen,
One arm around her boyish paramour,
Strays often there at eve, and I have seen
The moon strip off her misty vestiture
For young Endymion's eyes; be not afraid,
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