| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: to make his way in the world which they chose for their scene of
operations. Only one of the four, indeed, had succeeded in coming as
far as the foot of the ladder.
To have money is nothing; the self-made man only finds out all that he
lacks after six months of flatteries. Andoche Finot, the self-made man
in question, stiff, taciturn, cold, and dull-witted, possessed the
sort of spirit which will not shrink from groveling before any
creature that may be of use to him, and the cunning to be insolent
when he needs a man no longer. Like one of the grotesque figures in
the ballet in Gustave, he was a marquis behind, a boor in front. And
this high-priest of commerce had a following.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: XXIII
AS she fled on toward the lights of the streets a breath of
freedom seemed to blow into her face.
Like a weary load the accumulated hypocrisies of the last months
had dropped from her: she was herself again, Nick's Susy, and
no one else's. She sped on, staring with bright bewildered eyes
at the stately facades of the La Muette quarter, the
perspectives of bare trees, the awakening glitter of shop-
windows holding out to her all the things she would never again
be able to buy ....
In an avenue of shops she paused before a milliner's window, and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: my child the moment it was born?--thrown it on the troubled wave
of life, without a hand to support it?'--She looked up: 'What have
I not suffered!--may I find a father where I am going!--Her head
turned; a stupor ensued; a faintness--'Have a little patience,'
said Maria, holding her swimming head (she thought of her mother),
'this cannot last long; and what is a little bodily pain to the
pangs I have endured?'
"A new vision swam before her. Jemima seemed to enter--
leading a little creature, that, with tottering footsteps, approached
the bed. The voice of Jemima sounding as at a distance, called
her--she tried to listen, to speak, to look!
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