| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: On the other hand, Madame Bridau, motherly love, kept her expenses
down to the same sum. By way of penance for her former over-
confidence, she heroically cut off her own little enjoyments. As with
other timid souls of limited intelligence, one shock to her feelings
rousing her distrust led her to exaggerate a defect in her character
until it assumed the consistency of a virtue. The Emperor, she said to
herself, might forget them; he might die in battle; her pension, at
any rate, ceased with her life. She shuddered at the risk her children
ran of being left alone in the world without means. Quite incapable of
understanding Roguin when he explained to her that in seven years
Madame Descoings's assignment would replace the money she had sold out
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: evil for the sake of evil. Herzen wished for the happiness of the
Slav peasant; Pougatcheff wanted to be elected Emperor, but all
that Bakounine wanted was to overthrow the actual order of
things, no matter by what means, and to replace social
concentration by a universal upheaval.
"It was the dream of a Tartar; it was true Nihilism pushed to
extreme and practical conclusions. It was, in a word, the applied
philosophy of chance, the indeterminate end of anarchy. Monstrous
it may be, but grand in its monstrosity!
"And you must note that the typical man of action so despised by
the Countess was, in Bakounine, the gigantic dreamer whom I have
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Now that I am myself a master,
My gains come softer still and faster.
As thus: on Wednesday, a maid
Came to me in the way of trade.
Her mother, an old farmer's wife,
Required a drug to save her life.
'At once, my dear, at once,' I said,
Patted the child upon the head,
Bade her be still a loving daughter,
And filled the bottle up with water.'
'Well, and the mother?' Robin cried.
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