| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart: Chapter X. ON THE STAIRS
I was roused by someone walking across the roof, the cracking of
tin under feet, and a comfortable and companionable odor of
tobacco. I moved a very little, and then I saw that it was a
man--the height and erectness told me which man. And just at that
instant he saw me.
"Good Lord!" he ejaculated, and throwing his cigar away he came
across quickly. "Why, Mrs. Wilson, what in the world are you
doing here? I thought--they said--"
"That I was sulking again?" I finished disagreeably. "Perhaps I
am. In fact, I'm quite sure of it."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: society of to-day, his restless mind was apt to take its stand on the
lower ground of those diplomatists who hold that success justifies the
use of any means however base. It is one of the misfortunes attendant
upon great intellects that perforce they comprehend all things, both
good and evil.
The two young men judged society by the more lofty standard because
their social position was at the lowest end of the scale, for
unrecognized power is apt to avenge itself for lowly station by
viewing the world from a lofty standpoint. Yet it is, nevertheless,
true that they grew but the more bitter and hopeless after these swift
soaring flights to the upper regions of thought, their world by right.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: fulfilment of her vocation, but a cause of fear, anxiety, and
interminable suffering, torture. Women say it, they think it,
and they feel it too. Children to them are really a torture, not
because they do not wish to give birth to them, nurse them, and
care for them (women with a strong maternal instinct--and such
was my wife--are ready to do that), but because the children may
fall sick and die. They do not wish to give birth to them, and
then not love them; and when they love, they do not wish to feel
fear for the child's health and life. That is why they do not
wish to nurse them. 'If I nurse it,' they say, 'I shall become
too fond of it.' One would think that they preferred
The Kreutzer Sonata |
