| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: So beauty blemish'd once's for ever lost,
In spite of physic, painting, pain and cost.
XIV.
Good night, good rest. Ah, neither be my share:
She bade good night that kept my rest away;
And daff'd me to a cabin hang'd with care,
To descant on the doubts of my decay.
'Farewell,' quoth she, 'and come again tomorrow:
Fare well I could not, for I supp'd with sorrow.
Yet at my parting sweetly did she smile,
In scorn or friendship, nill I construe whether:
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: eyes glittering. The Count had scarcely breathed his last before his
wife came in and forced open the drawers and the desk; the carpet was
strewn with litter, some of the furniture and boxes were broken, the
signs of violence could be seen everywhere. But if her search had at
first proved fruitless, there was that in her excitement and attitude
which led me to believe that she had found the mysterious documents at
last. I glanced at the bed, and professional instinct told me all that
had happened. The mattress had been flung contemptuously down by the
bedside, and across it, face downwards, lay the body of the Count,
like one of the paper envelopes that strewed the carpet--he too was
nothing now but an envelope. There was something grotesquely horrible
Gobseck |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: slavery to duty. It is useless to warn them that this reaction,
if prescribed as a panacea, will prove as great a failure as all
the other reactions have done; for they do not recognize its
identity with any reaction that ever occurred before. Take for
instance the hackneyed historic example of the austerity of the
Commonwealth being followed by the licence of the Restoration.
You cannot persuade any moral enthusiast to accept this as a pure
oscillation from action to reaction. If he is a Puritan he looks
upon the Restoration as a national disaster: if he is an artist
he regards it as the salvation of the country from gloom, devil
worship and starvation of the affections. The Puritan is ready to
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