| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: sanctity, and for which women, as usual, were the ones to do penance.
Religious sentiment certainly had, in those days, an affinity with
love; it was either the motive or the end of it. Love was still a
religion, with its fine fanaticism, its naive superstitions, its
sublime devotions, which sympathized with those of Christianity.
The manners of that period will also serve to explain this alliance
between religion and love. In the first place society had no meeting-
place except before the altar. Lords and vassals, men and women were
equals nowhere else. There alone could lovers see each other and
communicate. The festivals of the Church were the theatre of former
times; the soul of woman was more keenly stirred in a cathedral than
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse
for conforming to the laws of the land. I am but too ready to
conform to them. Indeed, I have reason to suspect myself on this
head; and each year, as the tax-gatherer comes round, I find myself
disposed to review the acts and position of the general and State
governments, and the spirit of the people, to discover a pretext for
conformity.
"We must affect our country as our parents,
And if at any time we alienate
Our love or industry from doing it honor,
We must respect effects and teach the soul
Walden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: them, and set up his tail, and bristle up his feathers, just as a
cock-robin would; and declare that he found the worm first; and
that it was his worm; and, if not, that then it was not a worm at
all.
He had met Sir John at Scarborough, or Fleetwood, or somewhere or
other (if you don't care where, nobody else does), and had made
acquaintance with him, and become very fond of his children. Now,
Sir John knew nothing about sea-cockyolybirds, and cared less,
provided the fishmonger sent him good fish for dinner; and My Lady
knew as little: but she thought it proper that the children should
know something. For in the stupid old times, you must understand,
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