| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: flattering; but she loved the embarrassment into which he fell when
she had led him to say that what he loved in a woman was a noble soul
and the devotion which made each day of life a constant happiness; and
that after a few years of married life the handsomest of women was no
more to a husband than the ugliest. After gathering up what there was
of truth in all such paradoxes tending to reduce the value of beauty,
Balthazar would suddenly perceive the ungraciousness of his remarks,
and show the goodness of his heart by the delicate transitions of
thought with which he proved to Mademoiselle de Temninck that she was
perfect in his eyes.
The spirit of devotion which, it may be, is the crown of love in a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: It is to be understood that I have been painting chaos and describing
the inarticulate. Every lineament that appears is too precise, almost
every word used too strong. Take a finger-post in the mountains on a
day of rolling mists; I have but copied the names that appear upon the
pointers, the names of definite and famous cities far distant, and now
perhaps basking in sunshine; but Christina remained all these hours, as
it were, at the foot of the post itself, not moving, and enveloped in
mutable and blinding wreaths of haze.
The day was growing late and the sunbeams long and level, when she sat
suddenly up, and wrapped in its handkerchief and put by that psalm-book
which had already played a part so decisive in the first chapter of her
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: "It was logic, handled as a hammer by boys just out of school and by
obscure journalists, which demolished the splendors of the social
state," said the Comte de Vandenesse. "In these days every rogue who
can hold his head straight in his collar, cover his manly bosom with
half an ell of satin by way of a cuirass, display a brow where
apocryphal genius gleams under curling locks, and strut in a pair of
patent-leather pumps graced by silk socks which cost six francs,
screws his eye-glass into one of his eye-sockets by puckering up his
cheek, and whether he be an attorney's clerk, a contractor's son, or a
banker's bastard, he stares impertinently at the prettiest duchess,
appraises her as she walks downstairs, and says to his friend--dressed
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