| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: must we not die?" And then--I wandered on, musing on the doubtful
future, on my blighted hopes. Gnawed by these gloomy thoughts, I
turned mechanically into the convent church, with the gray towers that
loomed like ghosts though the sea mists. I looked round with no
kindling of the imagination at the forest of columns, at the slender
arches set aloft upon the leafy capitals, a delicate labyrinth of
sculpture. I walked with careless eyes along the side aisles that
opened out before me like vast portals, ever turning upon their
hinges. It was scarcely possible to see, by the dim light of the
autumn day, the sculptured groinings of the roof, the delicate and
clean-cut lines of the mouldings of the graceful pointed arches. The
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: There are many spiritual eyes that seem to spy upon our actions -
eyes of the dead and the absent, whom we imagine to behold us in
our most private hours, and whom we fear and scruple to offend: our
witnesses and judges. And among these, even if you should think me
childish, I must count my d'Artagnan - not d'Artagnan of the
memoirs whom Thackeray pretended to prefer - a preference, I take
the freedom of saying, in which he stands alone; not the d'Artagnan
of flesh and blood, but him of the ink and paper; not Nature's, but
Dumas's. And this is the particular crown and triumph of the
artist - not to be true merely, but to be lovable; not simply to
convince, but to enchant.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: glad when my derisive friend closed her house for the summer.
She had expected to gather amusement from the drama of my
intercourse with the Misses Bordereau, and she was disappointed
that the intercourse, and consequently the drama, had not come off.
"They'll lead you on to your ruin," she said before she left Venice.
"They'll get all your money without showing you a scrap."
I think I settled down to my business with more concentration
after she had gone away.
It was a fact that up to that time I had not, save on a single
brief occasion, had even a moment's contact with my queer hostesses.
The exception had occurred when I carried them according
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