| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: eloquence, who possess the art of boring by diffusiveness, the torment
of all meetings and assemblies where they belittle everything, and who
desire to become personages at any cost,--Massol no longer wanted the
place as Keeper of the Seals; he had seen some five or six different
men go through that office in four years, and the robes disgusted him.
In exchange, his mind was now set on obtaining a chair on the Board of
Education and a place in the Council of State; the whole adorned with
the cross of the Legion of honor. Du Tillet and Nucingen had
guaranteed the cross to him, and the office of Master of Petitions
provided he obeyed them blindly.
The better to deceive Raoul, these men allowed him to manage the paper
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis: (E'en puzzled Hatters, two or three!)
Tame anarchists, a dreary crew,
Squib Socialists too damp to sosh,
Fake Hobohemians steeped in suds,
Glib females in Artistic Duds
With Captive Husbands cowed and gauche.
I saw some Soul Mates side by side
Who said their cute young Souls were pink;
I saw a Genius on the Brink
(Or so he said) of suicide.
I saw a Playwright who had tried
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: the slightest movement for two days. This tale had prodigious success,
and the doctor of Carentan, a royalist "in petto," increased its
effect by the manner in which he discussed the remedy.
Nevertheless, suspicions had taken too strong a root in the minds of
some obstinate persons, and a few philosophers, to be thus dispelled;
so that all Madame de Dey's usual visitors came eagerly and early that
evening to watch her countenance: some out of true friendship, but
most of them to detect the secret of her seclusion.
They found the countess seated as usual, at the corner of the great
fireplace in her salon, a room almost as unpretentious as the other
salons in Carentan; for, in order not to wound the narrow view of her
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