| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: despised the world, and made the utmost of the world. His
felicity could not have been of the bourgeois kind, rejoicing in
periodically recurrent bouilli, in the comforts of a warming-pan,
a lamp of a night, and a new pair of slippers once a quarter.
Nay, rather he seized upon existence as a monkey snatches a nut,
and after no long toying with it, proceeds deftly to strip off
the mere husks to reach the savory kernel within.
Poetry and the sublime transports of passion scarcely reached
ankle-depth with him now. He in nowise fell into the error of
strong natures who flatter themselves now and again that little
souls will believe in a great soul, and are willing to barter
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: quacks who pretend that they can save our souls from their own
damnation. If a doctor were to say to his patients, "I am familiar
with your symptoms, because I have seen other people in your
condition; and I will bring the very little knowledge we have to your
treatment; but except in that very shallow sense I dont know what is
the matter with you; and I cant undertake to cure you," he would be a
lost man professionally; and if a clergyman, on being called on to
award a prize for good conduct in the village school, were to say, "I
am afraid I cannot say who is the best-behaved child, because I really
do not know what good conduct is; but I will gladly take the teacher's
word as to which child has caused least inconvenience," he would
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: Emperor's repugnance notwithstanding, Cambaceres allowed Blondet to
remain on the bench, saying that the old barrister was one of the best
jurisconsults in France.
Blondet's talents, his knowledge of the old law of the land and
subsequent legislation, should by rights have brought him far in his
profession; but he had this much in common with some few great
spirits: he entertained a prodigious contempt for his own special
knowledge, and reserved all his pretentions, leisure, and capacity for
a second pursuit unconnected with the law. To this pursuit he gave his
almost exclusive attention. The good man was passionately fond of
gardening. He was in correspondence with some of the most celebrated
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