| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: difficulty, and with infinite pains, which rendered the youth still
dearer to her; a score of times the doctors had predicted his death,
but, confident in her own presentiments, her own unfailing hope, she
had the happiness of seeing him come safely through the perils of
childhood, with a constitution that was ever improving, in spite of
the warnings of the Faculty.
Thanks to her constant care, this son had grown and developed so much,
and so gracefully, that at twenty years of age, he was thought a most
elegant cavalier at Versailles. Madame de Dey possessed a happiness
which does not always crown the efforts and struggles of a mother. Her
son adored her; their souls understood each other with fraternal
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: sufficient sense or modesty to determine that there are others who excel
them in the power of discriminating between truth and error, and by whom
they may be instructed, ought rather to content themselves with the
opinions of such than trust for more correct to their own reason.
For my own part, I should doubtless have belonged to the latter class, had
I received instruction from but one master, or had I never known the
diversities of opinion that from time immemorial have prevailed among men
of the greatest learning. But I had become aware, even so early as during
my college life, that no opinion, however absurd and incredible, can be
imagined, which has not been maintained by some on of the philosophers;
and afterwards in the course of my travels I remarked that all those whose
Reason Discourse |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: his arms, "I'm so damnably helpless," he said, and then, to the picture,
"Perhaps it's not as bad as it sounds; perhaps it is just my
sensitiveness." In the half light of the drawing-room the smile seemed to
deepen in Anna's portrait, and to become secret, even cruel. "No," he
reflected, "that smile is not at all her happiest expression--it was a
mistake to let her have it taken smiling like that. She doesn't look like
my wife--like the mother of my son." Yes, that was it, she did not look
like the mother of a son who was going to be a partner in the firm. The
picture got on his nerves; he held it in different lights, looked at it
from a distance, sideways, spent, it seemed to Andreas afterwards, a whole
lifetime trying to fit it in. The more he played with it the deeper grew
|
