| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: me that or anything else about his affairs; and his black pessimism
would have shot him violently out of any church at present established
in the West. We never talked about affairs: we talked about
Shakespear, and the Dark Lady, and Swift, and Koheleth, and the
cycles, and the mysterious moments when a feeling came over us that
this had happened to us before, and about the forgeries of the
Pentateuch which were offered for sale to the British Museum, and
about literature and things of the spirit generally. He always came
to my desk at the Museum and spoke to me about something or other, no
doubt finding that people who were keen on this sort of conversation
were rather scarce. He remains a vivid spot of memory in the void of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: 'But I have neither,' said the child.
'Well,' she said, 'here is a bright florin, with which you may
purchase both the one and the other; and I shall give it you at
once, if you will answer my question. The clay bear or the china
monkey - come?'
But the unbreeched soothsayer only stared upon the florin with big
eyes; the oracle could not be persuaded to reply; and the Countess
kissed him lightly, gave him the florin, set him down upon the path,
and resumed her way with swinging and elastic gait.
'Which shall I break?' she wondered; and she passed her hand with
delight among the careful disarrangement of her locks. 'Which?' and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dreams by Olive Schreiner: him, so, serving him, you will at last come to feel possession in him, and
you will forgive.' And he said, 'I will do it.' Afterwards, as I passed
by in the dark of night, I heard one crying out, 'I have done all. It
helps nothing! My speaking well of him helps me nothing! If I share my
heart's blood with him, is the burning within me less? I cannot forgive; I
cannot forgive! Oh, God, I cannot forgive!'
"I said to him, 'See here, look back on all your past. See from your
childhood all smallness, all indirectness that has been yours; look well at
it, and in its light do you not see every man your brother? Are you so
sinless you have right to hate?'
"He looked, and said, 'Yes, you are right; I too have failed, and I forgive
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