| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: only dimly and unwillingly recognised in his experience.
Hence the smallness, the triteness, and the inhumanity in
works of merely sectarian religion; and hence we find equal
although unsimilar limitation in works inspired by the spirit
of the flesh or the despicable taste for high society. So
that the first duty of any man who is to write is
intellectual. Designedly or not, he has so far set himself
up for a leader of the minds of men; and he must see that his
own mind is kept supple, charitable, and bright. Everything
but prejudice should find a voice through him; he should see
the good in all things; where he has even a fear that he does
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: Chatelet was so abrupt that it could not fail to strike Louise.
Towards six o'clock that evening, when dinner was over, Mme. de
Bargeton beckoned Lucien to sit beside her on the shabby sofa, covered
with a flowered chintz--a yellow pattern on a red ground.
"Lucien mine," she said, "don't you think that if we have both of us
done a foolish thing, suicidal for both our interests, it would only
be common sense to set matters right? We ought not to live together in
Paris, dear boy, and we must not allow anyone to suspect that we
traveled together. Your career depends so much upon my position that I
ought to do nothing to spoil it. So, to-night, I am going to remove
into lodgings near by. But you will stay on here, we can see each
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: And, if possess'd, as soon decay'd and done
As is the morning's silver-melting dew
Against the golden splendour of the sun!
An expir'd date, cancell'd ere well begun:
Honour and beauty, in the owner's arms,
Are weakly fortress'd from a world of harms.
Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator;
What needeth then apologies be made,
To set forth that which is so singular?
Or why is Collatine the publisher
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