| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: tact; the sensitive warnings of which enabled her to follow the
delicate line along which she might satisfy the exactions of this
mixed society, without humiliating the touchy pride of the parvenus,
or shocking that of her own friends.
Then about thirty-eight years of age, she still preserved, not the
fresh plump beauty which distinguishes the daughters of Lower
Normandy, but a fragile and, so to speak, aristocratic beauty. Her
features were delicate and refined, her figure supple and easy. When
she spoke, her pale face lighted and seemed to acquire fresh life. Her
large dark eyes were full of affability and kindness, and yet their
calm, religious expression seemed to say that the springs of her
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: with death, hell, and sin, and refuses grace and mercy, as though
it were His will to condemn and to be angry eternally. This few
men experience, but David cries out in Psalm vi, "O Lord, rebuke
me not in Thine anger." To believe at such times that God, in His
mercy, is pleased with us, is the highest work that can be done
by and in the creature; but of this the work-righteous and doers
of good works know nothing at all. For how could they here look
for good things and grace from God, as long as they are not
certain in their works, and doubt even on the lowest step of
faith.
In this way I have, as I said, always praised faith, and rejected
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: incomplete condition of the Ducal Palace accounted for it. The longing
to regain my freedom gave me something like genius. Groping about with
my fingers, I spelled out an Arabic inscription on the wall. The
author of the work informed those to come after him that he had loosed
two stones in the lowest course of masonry and hollowed out eleven
feet beyond underground. As he went on with his excavations, it became
necessary to spread the fragments of stone and mortar over the floor
of his cell. But even if jailers and inquisitors had not felt sure
that the structure of the building was such that no watch was needed
below, the level of the Pozzi dungeons being several steps below the
threshold, it was possible gradually to raise the earthen floor
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