| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: was as if here were another flower, the human sister of those
vegetable ones, as beautiful as they, more beautiful than the
richest of them, but still to be touched only with a glove, nor
to be approached without a mask. As Beatrice came down the garden
path, it was observable that she handled and inhaled the odor of
several of the plants which her father had most sedulously
avoided.
"Here, Beatrice," said the latter, "see how many needful offices
require to be done to our chief treasure. Yet, shattered as I am,
my life might pay the penalty of approaching it so closely as
circumstances demand. Henceforth, I fear, this plant must be
Mosses From An Old Manse |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: victim to the ideas which weighed in those days upon French youth, and
we must here explain why.
The Vidame de Pamiers was still, at sixty-seven years of age, a very
brilliant man, having seen much and lived much; a good talker, a man
of honor and a gallant man, but who held as to women the most
detestable opinions; he loved them, and he despised them. /Their/
honor! /their/ feelings! Ta-ra-ra, rubbish and shams! When he was with
them, he believed in them, the ci-devant "monstre"; he never
contradicted them, and he made them shine. But among his male friends,
when the topic of the sex came up, he laid down the principle that to
deceive women, and to carry on several intrigues at once, should be
Ferragus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: husband and wife must be. But now she could remember with rapture
that, tortured by foolish fears, she had watched him with trembling
during their first stay on this little estate in the Gatinais. Vain
suspiciousness of love! Each of these months of happiness had passed
like a dream in the midst of joys which never rang false. She had
always seen that kind creature with a tender smile on his lips, a
smile that seemed to mirror her own.
As she called up these vivid pictures, her eyes filled with tears; she
thought she could not love him enough, and was tempted to regard her
ambiguous position as a sort of tax levied by Fate on her love.
Finally, invincible curiosity led her to wonder for the thousandth
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