| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: the dungeons of our common nature by the key of holy sympathy,
which gave him a right to share in all its secrets; he was now a
cold observer, looking on mankind as the subject of his
experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be his
puppets, and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of
crime as were demanded for his study.
Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He began to be so from the
moment that his moral nature had ceased to keep the pace of
improvement with his intellect. And now, as his highest effort
and inevitable development,--as the bright and gorgeous flower,
and rich, delicious fruit of his life's labor,--he had produced
The Snow Image |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: deliberating."
"But, surely," said Rasselas, "the wise men, to whom we listen with
reverence and wonder, chose that mode of life for themselves which
they thought most likely to make them happy."
"Very few," said the poet, "live by choice. Every man is placed in
the present condition by causes which acted without his foresight,
and with which he did not always willingly co-operate, and
therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of
his neighbour better than his own."
"I am pleased to think," said the Prince, "that my birth has given
me at least one advantage over others by enabling me to determine
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: tresses waved--she breathed! And yet, though I have grasped the secret
of rendering on a flat canvas the relief and roundness of nature, this
morning at dawn I saw many errors. Ah! to attain that glorious result,
I have studied to their depths the masters of color. I have analyzed
and lifted, layer by layer, the colors of Titian, king of light. Like
him, great sovereign of art, I have sketched my figure in light clear
tones of supple yet solid color; for shadow is but an accident,--
remember that, young man. Then I worked backward, as it were; and by
means of half-tints, and glazings whose transparency I kept
diminishing little by little, I was able to cast strong shadows
deepening almost to blackness. The shadows of ordinary painters are
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