| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: The Marquise de Listomere danced, about a month ago, with a young man
as modest as he is lively, full of good qualities, but exhibiting,
chiefly, his defects. He is ardent, but he laughs at ardor; he has
talent, and he hides it; he plays the learned man with aristocrats,
and the aristocrat with learned men. Eugene de Rastignac is one of
those extremely clever young men who try all things, and seem to sound
others to discover what the future has in store. While awaiting the
age of ambition, he scoffs at everything; he has grace and
originality, two rare qualities because the one is apt to exclude the
other. On this occasion he talked for nearly half an hour with madame
de Listomere, without any predetermined idea of pleasing her. As they
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare: Love and constancy is dead;
Phoenix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence.
So they lov'd, as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;
Two distincts, division none:
Number there in love was slain.
Hearts remote, yet not asunder;
Distance, and no space was seen
'Twixt the turtle and his queen;
But in them it were a wonder.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: It served to save from the cold, the frost, the hail, and rain,
to shelter from the winds of winter, to preserve from slumber
in the mud which produces fever, and from slumber in the snow
which produces death, a little being who had no father, no mother,
no bread, no clothes, no refuge. It served to receive the innocent
whom society repulsed. It served to diminish public crime.
It was a lair open to one against whom all doors were shut.
It seemed as though the miserable old mastodon, invaded by vermin
and oblivion, covered with warts, with mould, and ulcers, tottering,
worm-eaten, abandoned, condemned, a sort of mendicant colossus,
asking alms in vain with a benevolent look in the midst of the
Les Miserables |
