| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde: us.
[Enter LORD ALFRED. He joins LADY STUTFIELD.]
LADY HUNSTANTON. Ah! we women should forgive everything, shouldn't
we, dear Mrs. Arbuthnot? I am sure you agree with me in that.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. I do not, Lady Hunstanton. I think there are many
things women should never forgive.
LADY HUNSTANTON. What sort of things?
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. The ruin of another woman's life.
[Moves slowly away to back of stage.]
LADY HUNSTANTON. Ah! those things are very sad, no doubt, but I
believe there are admirable homes where people of that kind are
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: never happier than when he read or talked of the Eternal
City. When he was in Holland, he was "with child" to see any
strange thing. Meeting some friends and singing with them in
a palace near the Hague, his pen fails him to express his
passion of delight, "the more so because in a heaven of
pleasure and in a strange country." He must go to see all
famous executions. He must needs visit the body of a
murdered man, defaced "with a broad wound," he says, "that
makes my hand now shake to write of it." He learned to
dance, and was "like to make a dancer." He learned to sing,
and walked about Gray's Inn Fields "humming to myself (which
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: sand, our souls were still surrendered to the softness unspeakable of
our exquisite ecstasy. They were filled with that pure pleasure which
cannot be described unless we liken it to the joy of listening to
enchanting music, Mozart's "Audiamo mio ben," for instance. When two
pure sentiments blend together, what is that but two sweet voices
singing? To be able to appreciate properly the emotion that held us,
it would be necessary to share the state of half sensuous delight into
which the events of the morning had plunged us. Admire for a long time
some pretty dove with iridescent colors, perched on a swaying branch
above a spring, and you will give a cry of pain when you see a hawk
swooping down upon her, driving its steel claws into her breast, and
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