| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: meditations, in the cold atmosphere of her home. Study was indifferent
to her, since study had not brought her back her husband's heart.
Initiated into the secret of these souls of fire, but bereft of their
resources, she was compelled to share their sorrows without sharing
their pleasures. She was disgusted with the world, which to her seemed
mean and small as compared with the incidents of passion. In short,
her life was a failure.
One evening an idea flashed upon her that lighted up her dark grief
like a beam from heaven. Such an idea could never have smiled on a
heart less pure, less virtuous than hers. She determined to go to the
Duchesse de Carigliano, not to ask her to give her back her husband's
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: The effect I desired was obtained, for he at once fell from his high-horse
and became a child again.
"I don't want an elephant's soul, or any soul at all!" he said.
For a few moments he sat despondently. Suddenly he jumped to his feet,
with his eyes blazing and all the signs of intense cerebral excitement.
"To hell with you and your souls!" he shouted. "Why do you plague me
about souls? Haven't I got enough to worry, and pain, to distract
me already, without thinking of souls?"
He looked so hostile that I thought he was in for another homicidal fit,
so I blew my whistle.
The instant, however, that I did so he became calm, and said apologetically,
Dracula |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: can for the time pervade and control every member and function of
the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality
into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which, when we are
loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent
invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and
what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but
various fruits which succeed it. Man flows at once to God when the
channel of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires and our
impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured that the
animal is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being
established. Perhaps there is none but has cause for shame on
Walden |
