| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: without book-license! As if he must have a permit from some dusty
lexicon before he can take a good word into his mouth and speak it
out like the people with whom he has lived!
The truth is that the man who is very particular not to commit
himself, in pronunciation or otherwise, and talks as if his remarks
were being taken down in shorthand, and shudders at the thought of
making a mistake, will hardly be able to open your heart or let out
the best that is in his own.
Reserve and precision are a great protection to overrated
reputations; but they are death to talk.
In talk it is not correctness of grammar nor elegance of enunciation
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: That stand between your highness' love and mine.
KING EDWARD.
Name them, fair Countess, and, by heaven, I will.
COUNTESS.
It is their lives that stand between our love,
That I would have choked up, my sovereign.
KING EDWARD.
Whose lives, my Lady?
COUNTESS.
My thrice loving liege,
Your Queen and Salisbury, my wedded husband,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: who claimed to know him better denied that impression, insisting that
he was only stupidly dull under Mademoiselle Gamard's despotism, or
else worn out by too much fasting. He seldom spoke, and never laughed.
When it did so happen that he felt agreeably moved, a feeble smile
would flicker on his lips and lose itself in the wrinkles of his face.
Birotteau, on the other hand, was all expansion, all frankness; he
loved good things and was amused by trifles with the simplicity of a
man who knew no spite or malice. The Abbe Troubert roused, at first
sight, an involuntary feeling of fear, while the vicar's presence
brought a kindly smile to the lips of all who looked at him. When the
tall canon marched with solemn step through the naves and cloisters of
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