| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: provokes, impossible not to calculate all its consequences. These
calculations lead to selfishness. If some poor student, carried away
by an impassioned enthusiasm, is fain to rise above selfish
considerations, the suspicious attitude of those about him makes him
pause and doubt; it is so hard not to share their mistrust, so
difficult not to be on his guard against his own generous thoughts.
His heart is seared and contracted by this struggle, the current of
life sets toward the brain, and the callousness of the Parisian is the
result--the condition of things in which schemes for power and wealth
are concealed by the most charming frivolity, and lurk beneath the
sentimental transports that take the place of enthusiasm. The
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: corresponded abroad, and from them was handed about by word of
mouth only; so that things did not spread instantly over the whole
nation, as they do now. But it seems that the Government had a true
account of it, and several councils were held about ways to prevent its
coming over; but all was kept very private. Hence it was that this
rumour died off again, and people began to forget it as a thing we
were very little concerned in, and that we hoped was not true; till the
latter end of November or the beginning of December 1664 when two
men, said to be Frenchmen, died of the plague in Long Acre, or rather
at the upper end of Drury Lane. The family they were in endeavoured
to conceal it as much as possible, but as it had gotten some vent in the
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: were on terms with la Porette, that heretic jade from Denmark or
Norway, whose last cries you heard from here. She was a brave witch;
she never blenched at the stake, which was proof enough of her compact
with the Devil. I saw her as plain as I see you; she preached to the
throng, and declared she was in heaven and could see God.
"And since that, I tell you, I have never slept quietly in my bed. My
lord, who lodges over us, is of a surety more of a wizard than a
Christian. On my word as an officer, I shiver when that old man passes
near me; he never sleeps of nights; if I wake, his voice is ringing
like a bourdon of bells, and I hear him muttering incantations in the
language of hell. Have you ever seen him eat an honest crust of bread
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