| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: in some sublime melody, some song lost to the world.
The General was listening now to such a song; a mysterious music
unknown to all other ears, as the solitary plaint of some
mateless bird dying alone in a virgin forest.
"Great Heavens! what are you playing there?" he asked in an
unsteady voice.
"The prelude of a ballad, called, I believe, Fleuve du Tage."
"I did not know that there was such music in a piano," he
returned.
"Ah!" she said, and for the first time she looked at him as a
woman looks at the man she loves, "nor do you know, my friend,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: we must rather allow that he had done far better; for the
thief himself is continually and busily occupied; and even
one born to inherit a million will have more calls upon his
time than Thoreau. Well might he say, "What old people tell
you you cannot do, you try and find you can." And how
surprising is his conclusion: "I am convinced that TO
MAINTAIN ONESELF ON THIS EARTH IS NOT A HARDSHIP, BUT A
PASTIME, if we will live simply and wisely; AS THE PURSUITS
OF SIMPLER NATIONS ARE STILL THE SPORTS OF THE MORE
ARTIFICIAL."
When he had enough of that kind of life, he showed the same
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: especially when that third was of an obliging,
yielding temper; and they could not but own, when their
aunt inquired into her faults, or their brother Edmund
urged her claims to their kindness, that "Fanny was
good-natured enough."
Edmund was uniformly kind himself; and she had nothing
worse to endure on the part of Tom than that sort
of merriment which a young man of seventeen will always
think fair with a child of ten. He was just entering
into life, full of spirits, and with all the liberal
dispositions of an eldest son, who feels born only
Mansfield Park |
