| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: and it was consequently soon settled that Anne should not go to Bath
till Lady Russell took her, and that all the intervening time
should be divided between Uppercross Cottage and Kellynch Lodge.
So far all was perfectly right; but Lady Russell was almost startled
by the wrong of one part of the Kellynch Hall plan, when it burst on her,
which was, Mrs Clay's being engaged to go to Bath with Sir Walter
and Elizabeth, as a most important and valuable assistant to the latter
in all the business before her. Lady Russell was extremely sorry
that such a measure should have been resorted to at all, wondered,
grieved, and feared; and the affront it contained to Anne,
in Mrs Clay's being of so much use, while Anne could be of none,
Persuasion |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: animal walked towards him. But he looked at her caressingly, staring
into her eyes in order to magnetize her, and let her come quite close
to him; then with a movement both gentle and amorous, as though he
were caressing the most beautiful of women, he passed his hand over
her whole body, from the head to the tail, scratching the flexible
vertebrae which divided the panther's yellow back. The animal waved
her tail voluptuously, and her eyes grew gentle; and when for the
third time the Frenchman accomplished this interesting flattery, she
gave forth one of those purrings by which cats express their pleasure;
but this murmur issued from a throat so powerful and so deep that it
resounded through the cave like the last vibrations of an organ in a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: gown or a garland in which to make a sensation! A fragile, delicate
creature will wear her stiff and brilliant harness of flowers and
diamonds, silk and steel, from nine at night till two and often three
o'clock in the morning. She eats little, to attract remark to her
slender waist; she satisfied her hunger with debilitating tea, sugared
cakes, ices which heat her, or slices of heavy pastry. The stomach is
made to yield to the orders of coquetry. The awakening comes too late.
A fashionable woman's whole life is in contradiction to the laws of
nature, and nature is pitiless. She has no sooner risen than she makes
an elaborate morning toilet, and thinks of the one which she means to
wear in the afternoon. The moment she is dressed she has to receive
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