| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: a discussion and stop it at the right moment. Her manner is affable
and smiling, her politeness never forced, her readiness to serve
others never servile; she reduces the respect she claims to a soft
shadow; she never wearies you, and you leave her satisfied with her
and with yourself. Her charming grace is conveyed to all the things
with which she surrounds herself. Everything about her pleases the
eye; in her presence you breathe, as it were, your native air. This
woman is natural. There is no effort about her; she is aiming at no
effect; her feelings are shown simply, because they are true. Frank
herself, she does not wound the vanity of others; she accepts men as
God made them; pitying the vicious, forgiving defects and absurdities,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: picturesque monument.
At daybreak I went to it. The tide was low, as it had been the
night before, and I saw that wonderful abbey rise up before me as
I approached it. After several hours' walking, I reached the
enormous mass of rock which supports the little town, dominated
by the great church. Having climbed the steep and narrow street,
I entered the most wonderful Gothic building that has ever been
erected to God on earth, large as a town, and full of low rooms
which seem buried beneath vaulted roofs, and of lofty galleries
supported by delicate columns.
I entered this gigantic granite jewel, which is as light in its
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Gubbins. "He's a rich man; and there's been a quarrel between
him and Hepzibah this many a day, because he won't give her
a living. That's the main reason of her setting up a cent-shop."
"I know that well enough," said the neighbor. "But they're gone,
--that's one thing certain. And who but a blood relation, that
couldn't help himself, I ask you, would take in that awful-tempered
old maid, and that dreadful Clifford? That's it, you may be sure."
Mrs. Gubbins took her departure, still brimming over with hot
wrath against the absent Hepzibah. For another half-hour, or,
perhaps, considerably more, there was almost as much quiet on the
outside of the house as within. The elm, however, made a pleasant,
House of Seven Gables |
