| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Misalliance by George Bernard Shaw: this damned materialism: what good is it to anybody? Ive got a soul:
dont tell me I havnt. Cut me up and you cant find it. Cut up a steam
engine and you cant find the steam. But, by George, it makes the
engine go. Say what you will, Summerhays, the divine spark is a fact.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Have I denied it?
TARLETON. Our whole civilization is a denial of it. Read Walt
Whitman.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. I shall go to the billiard room and get the balls
for you.
LINA. Thank you.
_Lord Summerhays goes out through the vestibule door._
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: for me? We ought to die together. I was promised he should
die with me. You have no right to put me to death alone. I
will not die alone -- I will not!" And he broke from the
priests struggling and raving like a wild beast, and
striving desperately to break the cords that bound his
hands. The executioner made a sign, and his two assistants
leaped from the scaffold and seized him. "What is going on?"
asked Franz of the count; for, as all the talk was in the
Roman dialect, he had not perfectly understood it. "Do you
not see?" returned the count, "that this human creature who
is about to die is furious that his fellow-sufferer does not
 The Count of Monte Cristo |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: La Tour d'Azyr should so conduct himself at such a time?"
"Aline, you are so extraordinary a mixture. At moments you shock
me by the indecency of your expressions; at others you amaze me by
the excess of your prudery. You have been brought up like a little
bourgeoise, I think. Yes, that is it - a little bourgeoise.
Quintin was always something of a shopkeeper at heart."
"I was asking your opinion on the conduct of M. de La Tour d'Azyr,
madame. Not on my own."
"But it is an indelicacy in you to observe such things. You should
be ignorant of them, and I can't think who is so... so unfeeling as
to inform you. But since you are informed, at least you should be
|