| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: Hoping
And fearing
In passionate pain;
Now shouting in triumph,
Now sunk in despair;--
With love's thrilling rapture
What joy can compare!
Mother. Have done with such baby-nonsense!
Clara. Nay, do not abuse it; 'tis a song of marvellous virtue. Many a time
have I lulled a grown child to sleep with it.
Mother. Ay! Thou canst think of nothing but thy love. If it only did not put
 Egmont |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: the realization of his hopes, it almost seemed as though the flames
that devoured his soul were issuing from his nostrils.
The inspired feelings that animate great men shone forth on the pale
face furrowed with wrinkles, on the brow haggard with care like that
of an old monarch, but above all they gleamed in the sparkling eye,
whose fires were fed by chastity imposed by the tyranny of ideas and
by the inward consecration of a great intellect. The cavernous eyes
seemed to have sunk in their orbits through midnight vigils and the
terrible reaction of hopes destroyed, yet ceaselessly reborn. The
zealous fanaticism inspired by an art or a science was evident in this
man; it betrayed itself in the strange, persistent abstraction of his
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: affair as he was; neither could tell tales upon the other. In the
first glow of happiness, the clergyman suffered a deep sigh to
escape him; and as his bosom had become choked and his throat dry
during his previous suspense, the sigh was followed by a cough.
Mr. Vandeleur looked up; his face contracted with the blackest and
most deadly passion; his eyes opened widely, and his under jaw
dropped in an astonishment that was upon the brink of fury. By an
instinctive movement he had covered the hat-box with the coat. For
half a minute the two men stared upon each other in silence. It
was not a long interval, but it sufficed for Mr. Rolles; he was one
of those who think swiftly on dangerous occasions; he decided on a
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