| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare: The dire imagination she did follow
This sound of hope doth labour to expel; 976
For now reviving joy bids her rejoice,
And flatters her it is Adonis' voice.
Whereat her tears began to turn their tide,
Being prison'd in her eye, like pearls in glass; 980
Yet sometimes falls an orient drop beside,
Which her cheek melts, as scorning it should pass
To wash the foul face of the sluttish ground,
Who is but drunken when she seemeth drown'd.
O hard-believing love! how strange it seems 985
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: to my dreary rest, I supplicated God, that, if it seemed good to
Him, I might soon be taken from this life, and admitted to that
world to come, where there was still hope of rejoining Jane.
"I was in my own room, and sitting by the window, which was open:
it soothed me to feel the balmy night-air; though I could see no
stars and only by a vague, luminous haze, knew the presence of a
moon. I longed for thee, Janet! Oh, I longed for thee both with
soul and flesh! I asked of God, at once in anguish and humility, if
I had not been long enough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might
not soon taste bliss and peace once more. That I merited all I
endured, I acknowledged--that I could scarcely endure more, I
Jane Eyre |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: epigram--a volume in a word--no longer strikes, as it did in the
eighteenth century, at persons or at things, but at squalid events,
and it dies in a day."
"Hence," said Blondet, "the intelligence of the lady, if she has any,
consists in casting doubts on everything. Here lies the great
difference between two women; the townswoman is certainly virtuous;
the lady does not know yet whether she is, or whether she always will
be; she hesitates and struggles where the other refuses point-blank
and falls full length. This hesitancy in everything is one of the last
graces left to her by our horrible times. She rarely goes to church,
but she will talk to you of religion; and if you have the good taste
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