| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: who was startled by the words and by the attitude of the speaker, so
expressive were they of ambition and security.
"Can it be that I am only a stepping-stone?" he asked himself. He
rose, and went into Madame Rabourdin's bedroom, where she followed
him, understanding from a motion of his head that he wished to speak
to her privately.
"Well, your husband's plan," he said; "what of it?"
"Bah! the useless nonsense of an honest man!" she replied. "He wants
to suppress fifteen thousand offices and do the work with five or six
thousand. You never heard of such nonsense; I will let you read the
whole document when copied; it is written in perfect good faith. His
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum: scare away crows."
"Can't you get down?" asked Dorothy.
"No, for this pole is stuck up my back. If you will please
take away the pole I shall be greatly obliged to you."
Dorothy reached up both arms and lifted the figure off the pole,
for, being stuffed with straw, it was quite light.
"Thank you very much," said the Scarecrow, when he had been
set down on the ground. "I feel like a new man."
Dorothy was puzzled at this, for it sounded queer to hear a
stuffed man speak, and to see him bow and walk along beside her.
"Who are you?" asked the Scarecrow when he had stretched
The Wizard of Oz |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: to lean over the edge of abysses in the hope of seeing to the bottom.
The life of that mighty brain, which split up on every side perhaps,
like a too vast empire, would have been set forth in the narrative of
this man's visions--a being incomplete for lack of force or of
weakness; but I preferred to give an account of my own impressions
rather than to compose a more or less poetical romance.
Louis Lambert died at the age of twenty-eight, September 25, 1824, in
his true love's arms. He was buried by her desire in an island in the
park at Villenoix. His tombstone is a plain stone cross, without name
or date. Like a flower that has blossomed on the margin of a
precipice, and drops into it, its colors and fragrance all unknown, it
Louis Lambert |
