| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: flung away together, an' then I shouldna ha' seen this day, an'
one buryin' 'ud ha' done for us both."
Here Lisbeth paused, but Adam sat in pained silence--he could not
speak otherwise than tenderly to his mother to-day, but he could
not help being irritated by this plaint. It was not possible for
poor Lisbeth to know how it affected Adam any more than it is
possible for a wounded dog to know how his moans affect the nerves
of his master. Like all complaining women, she complained in the
expectation of being soothed, and when Adam said nothing, she was
only prompted to complain more bitterly.
"I know thee couldst do better wi'out me, for thee couldst go
Adam Bede |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: fine, fat country girl, who until then had never left her
village. She had made the fortune at a single stroke, without
even knowing the source of that fortune. She went back, I heard
afterward, to her countryside, greatly saddened by her sister's
death, but with a sadness which was somewhat lightened by the
investment at four and a half per cent which she had been able to
make.
All these circumstances, often repeated in Paris, the mother city
of scandal, had begun to be forgotten, and I was even little by
little forgetting the part I had taken in them, when a new
incident brought to my knowledge the whole of Marguerite's life,
Camille |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: Of this false jewel, and his amorous spoil.
'But ah! who ever shunn'd by precedent
The destin'd ill she must herself assay?
Or force'd examples, 'gainst her own content,
To put the by-pass'd perils in her way?
Counsel may stop awhile what will not stay;
For when we rage, advice is often seen
By blunting us to make our wills more keen.
'Nor gives it satisfaction to our blood,
That we must curb it upon others' proof,
To be forbod the sweets that seems so good,
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