| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: be compelled to flourish against the sunny garden-wall. The old
clergyman, nurtured at the rich bosom of the English Church, had
a long established and legitimate taste for all good and
comfortable things, and however stern he might show himself in
the pulpit, or in his public reproof of such transgressions as
that of Hester Prynne, still, the genial benevolence of his
private life had won him warmer affection than was accorded to
any of his professional contemporaries.
Behind the Governor and Mr. Wilson came two other guests -- one,
the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, whom the reader may remember as
The Scarlet Letter |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: ideas, for steadiness of sentiment, absolute kindliness, and great
loyalty; though they had no esteem for his palette, they loved the man
who held it.
"What a misfortune it is that Fougeres has the vice of painting!" said
his comrades.
But for all this, Grassou gave excellent counsel, like those
feuilletonists incapable of writing a book who know very well where a
book is wanting. There was this difference, however, between literary
critics and Fougeres; he was eminently sensitive to beauties; he felt
them, he acknowledged them, and his advice was instinct with a spirit
of justice that made the justness of his remarks acceptable. After the
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: and money difficulties, who can talk of nothing but expenses and
who smiles at nothing but things getting cheaper -- is it
possible that this woman is no other than the slender Varya whom
I fell in love with so passionately for her fine, clear
intelligence, for her pure soul, her beauty, and, as Othello his
Desdemona, for her "sympathy" for my studies? Could that woman be
no other than the Varya who had once borne me a son?
I look with strained attention into the face of this flabby,
spiritless, clumsy old woman, seeking in her my Varya, but of her
past self nothing is left but her anxiety over my health and her
manner of calling my salary "our salary," and my cap "our cap."
|
