| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: tenderly that she blushed and cast down her eyes. Her clemency
enraptured Soulanges all the more, because this scene followed on the
misery he had endured at the ball. He seized his wife's hand and
kissed it gratefully. Is not gratitude often a part of love?
"Hortense, what is that on your finger that has hurt my lip so much?"
asked he, laughing.
"It is my diamond which you said you had lost, and which I have found.
General Montcornet did not marry Madame de Vaudremont, in spite of the
mutual understanding in which they had lived for a few minutes, for
she was one of the victims of the terrible fire which sealed the fame
of the ball given by the Austrian ambassador on the occasion of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness.
But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil.
Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in
his desolation; I am alone. "You, who call Frankenstein your friend,
seem to have a knowledge of my crimes and his misfortunes. But in
the detail which he gave you of them he could not sum up the hours
and months of misery which I endured wasting in impotent passions.
For while I destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own desires.
They were forever ardent and craving; still I desired love and
fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there no injustice in this?
Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me?
Frankenstein |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: They were lost and unacquainted -- till they found themselves in others,
Who had groped as they were groping where dim ways were perilous.
There were lives that were as dark as are the fears and intuitions
Of a child who knows himself and is alone with what he knows;
There were pensioners of dreams and there were debtors of illusions,
All to fail before the triumph of a weed that only grows.
There were thirsting heirs of golden sieves that held not wine or water,
And had no names in traffic or more value there than toys:
There were blighted sons of wonder in the Valley of the Shadow,
Where they suffered and still wondered why their wonder made no noise.
There were slaves who dragged the shackles of a precedent unbroken,
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