| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: with more natural and animal things. His crisis was the getting
of his soul in order, the discovery of its genuine habitat and
vocation, the escape from falsehoods into what for him were ways
of truth. It was a case of heterogeneous personality tardily and
slowly finding its unity and level. And though not many of us can
imitate Tolstoy, not having enough, perhaps, of the aboriginal
human marrow in our bones, most of us may at least feel as if it
might be better for us if we could.
Bunyan's recovery seems to have been even slower. For years
together he was alternately haunted with texts of Scripture, now
up and now down, but at last with an ever growing relief in his
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: clothes much too large for him and a white silk tie that rose halfway up
his collar. Grouped about them, with a fine regard for dignity and
precedence, sat their parents and relations; and perched on a stool at the
bride's right hand a little girl in a crumpled muslin dress with a wreath
of forget-me-nots hanging over one ear. Everybody was laughing and
talking, shaking hands, clinking glasses, stamping on the floor--a stench
of beer and perspiration filled the air.
Frau Brechenmacher, following her man down the room after greeting the
bridal party, knew that she was going to enjoy herself. She seemed to fill
out and become rosy and warm as she sniffed that familiar festive smell.
Somebody pulled at her skirt, and, looking down, she saw Frau Rupp, the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: For the blood we had not spilt.
The Warders with their shoes of felt
Crept by each padlocked door,
And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,
Grey figures on the floor,
And wondered why men knelt to pray
Who never prayed before.
All through the night we knelt and prayed,
Mad mourners of a corse!
The troubled plumes of midnight were
The plumes upon a hearse:
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