| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: short, all the confusion and vacancies resulting from plans for order
never carried out. The lawyer's private room, especially disordered by
this incessant rummage, bore witness to his unresting pace, the hurry
of a man overwhelmed with business, hunted by contradictory
necessities. The bookcase looked as if it had been sacked; there were
books scattered over everything, some piled up open, one on another,
others on the floor face downwards; registers of proceedings laid on
the floor in rows, lengthwise, in front of the shelves; and that floor
had not been polished for two years.
The tables and shelves were covered with ex votos, the offerings of
the grateful poor. On a pair of blue glass jars which ornamented the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: Three aged ones are still found there, in whom
The old time chides the new: these deem it long
Ere God restore them to a better world:
The good Gherardo, of Palazzo he
Conrad, and Guido of Castello, nam'd
In Gallic phrase more fitly the plain Lombard.
On this at last conclude. The church of Rome,
Mixing two governments that ill assort,
Hath miss'd her footing, fall'n into the mire,
And there herself and burden much defil'd."
"O Marco!" I replied, shine arguments
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: cardamon seeds in her shabby bag, and a carriage with a
crest on it waiting for her just around the corner. I
ached to slip my hand through her arm and ask her what
she thought of it all. I know that her reply would have
been exquisitely witty and audacious, and I did so long
to hear her say it.
No doubt some good angel tugs at my common sense,
restraining me from doing these things that I am tempted
to do. Of course it would be madness for a woman to
address unknown red-headed men with the look of an
engineer about them and a book of Dickens in their hands;
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