| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: cemetery. Paul, sobbing, headed the procession; Monsieur Bourais
followed, and then came the principle inhabitants of the town, the
women covered with black capes, and Felicite. The memory of her
nephew, and the thought that she had not been able to render him these
honours, made her doubly unhappy, and she felt as if he were being
buried with Virginia.
Madame Aubain's grief was uncontrollable. At first she rebelled
against God, thinking that he was unjust to have taken away her child
--she who had never done anything wrong, and whose conscience was so
pure! But no! she ought to have taken her South. Other doctors would
have saved her. She accused herself, prayed to be able to join her
 A Simple Soul |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: --or in other words, pelas (near), in his eagerness to win Hippodamia by
all means for his bride. Every one would agree that the name of Tantalus
is rightly given and in accordance with nature, if the traditions about him
are true.
HERMOGENES: And what are the traditions?
SOCRATES: Many terrible misfortunes are said to have happened to him in
his life--last of all, came the utter ruin of his country; and after his
death he had the stone suspended (talanteia) over his head in the world
below--all this agrees wonderfully well with his name. You might imagine
that some person who wanted to call him Talantatos (the most weighted down
by misfortune), disguised the name by altering it into Tantalus; and into
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: It was true, it was true,--that here in this huge city, with its
stores of heaped-up wealth, human creatures might be hunted down and
destroyed by the wild-beast powers of nature, just as truly as ever
they were in the days of the cave men!
Ona was now making about thirty dollars a month, and Stanislovas
about thirteen. To add to this there was the board of Jonas and
Marija, about forty-five dollars. Deducting from this the rent,
interest, and installments on the furniture, they had left sixty
dollars, and deducting the coal, they had fifty. They did without
everything that human beings could do without; they went in old and
ragged clothing, that left them at the mercy of the cold, and when the
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