| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: but she felt his powers: he was entertaining; and his
manners were so improved, so polite, so seriously and
blamelessly polite, that it was impossible not to be civil
to him in return.
A very few days were enough to effect this; and at the end
of those few days, circumstances arose which had a tendency
rather to forward his views of pleasing her, inasmuch as
they gave her a degree of happiness which must dispose
her to be pleased with everybody. William, her brother,
the so long absent and dearly loved brother, was in
England again. She had a letter from him herself, a few
Mansfield Park |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: his instrument; he did not trouble himself over a false note now and
again (a /canard/, in the language of the orchestra), neither did the
dancers, nor, for that matter, did my old Italian's acolytes; for I
had made up my mind that he must be Italian, and an Italian he was.
There was something great, something too of the despot about this old
Homer bearing within him an /Odyssey/ doomed to oblivion. The
greatness was so real that it triumphed over his abject position; the
despotism so much a part of him, that it rose above his poverty.
There are violent passions which drive a man to good or evil, making
of him a hero or a convict; of these there was not one that had failed
to leave its traces on the grandly-hewn, lividly Italian face. You
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: the kingdom of God shall have been taken away from us, and given to
a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.
An eternal heritage, I say, for the human race; which once gained,
can never be lost; which stands, and will stand; marches, and will
march, proving its growth, its health, its progressive force, its
certainty of final victory, by those very changes, disputes,
mistakes, which the ignorant and the bigoted hold up to scorn, as
proofs of its uncertainty and its rottenness; because they never
have dared or cared to ask boldly--What are the facts of the case?--
and have never discovered either the acuteness, the patience, the
calm justice, necessary for ascertaining the facts, or their awful
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