| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: insensibly formulated a horrible code--that of Indulgence. In taking
vengeance on a woman, do we not in fact admit that there is but one
for us, that we cannot do without her? And, then, is revenge the way
to win her back? If she is not indispensable, if there are other women
in the world, why not grant her the right to change which we assume?
"This, of course, applies only to passion; in any other sense it would
be socially wrong. Nothing more clearly proves the necessity for
indissoluble marriage than the instability of passion. The two sexes
must be chained up, like wild beasts as they are, by inevitable law,
deaf and mute. Eliminate revenge, and infidelity in love is nothing.
Those who believe that for them there is but one woman in the world
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: me back again upon a strong foundation of all the original
and manly virtues. But it is, once more, only a book for
those who have the gift of reading. I will be very frank - I
believe it is so with all good books except, perhaps,
fiction. The average man lives, and must live, so wholly in
convention, that gunpowder charges of the truth are more apt
to discompose than to invigorate his creed. Either he cries
out upon blasphemy and indecency, and crouches the closer
round that little idol of part-truths and part-conveniences
which is the contemporary deity, or he is convinced by what
is new, forgets what is old, and becomes truly blasphemous
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: The countess guessed the past from the present, and read the future.
Though nothing is so difficult as to make a man happy when he knows
himself to blame, she set herself to that task, which is worthy of an
angel. She became stoical. Descending into an abyss, whence she still
could see the sky, she devoted herself to the care of one man as the
sister of charity devotes herself to many. To reconcile him with
himself, she forgave him that for which he had no forgiveness. The
count grew miserly; she accepted the privations he imposed. Like all
who have known the world only to acquire its suspiciousness, he feared
betrayal; she lived in solitude and yielded without a murmur to his
mistrust. With a woman's tact she made him will to do that which was
The Lily of the Valley |
