| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: simplicity, perfect as some Greek statue, with the brow of a vestal.
"Ah! ah!" I cried, "now I know thee! Miserable woman, why hast thou
prostituted thyself? In the age of thy passions, in the time of thy
prosperity, the grace and purity of thy youth were forgotten.
Forgetful of thy heroic devotion, thy pure life, thy abundant faith,
thou didst resign thy primitive power and thy spiritual supremacy for
fleshly power. Thy linen vestments, thy couch of moss, the cell in the
rock, bright with rays of the Light Divine, was forsaken; thou hast
sparkled with diamonds, and shone with the glitter of luxury and
pride. Then, grown bold and insolent, seizing and overturning all
things in thy course like a courtesan eager for pleasure in her days
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: letters from Braddock highly recommending me. But, the expedition
having been unfortunate, my service, it seems, was not thought
of much value, for those recommendations were never of any use to me.
As to rewards from himself, I ask'd only one, which was, that he would
give orders to his officers not to enlist any more of our bought servants,
and that he would discharge such as had been already enlisted.
This he readily granted, and several were accordingly return'd
to their masters, on my application. Dunbar, when the command
devolv'd on him, was not so generous. He being at Philadelphia,
on his retreat, or rather flight, I apply'd to him for the discharge
of the servants of three poor farmers of Lancaster county that he
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: drawing-room, and opened the other door into his wife's bedroom.
Chapter 4
Darya Alexandrovna, in a dressing jacket, and with her now
scanty, once luxuriant and beautiful hair fastened up with
hairpins on the hape of her neck, with a sunken, thin face and
large, startled eyes, which looked prominent from the thinness of
her face, was standing among a litter of all sorts of things
scattered all over the room, before an open bureau, from which
she was taking something. Hearing her husband's steps, she
stopped, looking towards the door, and trying assiduously to give
her features a severe and contemptuous expression. She felt she
Anna Karenina |
