| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: the ineffectual high aspirations, the actual pettiness, the
coolness of sentiment and warmth of impulse, were all spontaneous
and unaffected, and as much the outcome of her own position as of
the position of the aristocracy to which she belonged. She was
wholly self-contained; she put herself proudly above the world
and beneath the shelter of her name. There was something of the
egoism of Medea in her life, as in the life of the aristocracy
that lay a-dying, and would not so much as raise itself or
stretch out a hand to any political physician; so well aware of
its feebleness, or so conscious that it was already dust, that it
refused to touch or be touched.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Are more or less the same, I leave to you.
I should say less. Whether or not, meanwhile,
We've all two legs -- and as for that, we haven't --
There were three kinds of men where I was born:
The good, the not so good, and Tasker Norcross.
Now there are two kinds."
"Meaning, as I divine,
Your friend is dead," I ventured.
Ferguson,
Who talked himself at last out of the world
He censured, and is therefore silent now,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: to be in the handwriting of the Professor.
After an inquest lasting nine days the coroner's jury declared
the remains found in the college to be those of Dr. George
Parkman, and that the deceased had met his death at the hands of
Professor J. W. Webster. The prisoner waived his right to a
magisterial investigation, and on January 26, 1850, the Grand
Jury returned a true bill. But it was not until March 17 that
the Professor's trial opened before the Supreme Court of
Massachusetts. The proceedings were conducted with that dignity
and propriety which we look for in the courts of that State. The
principal features in the defence were an attempt to impugn the
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
