| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: humanity. His gestures, no less than his look, were full of
irresistible power; his lean hands were those of a soldier; and if
your own eyes were forced to fall before his piercing gaze, you were
no less sure to tremble when by word or action he spoke to your soul.
He moved in silent majesty that made him seem a king without his
guard, a god without his rays.
His dress emphasized the ideas suggested by the peculiarities of his
mien and face. Soul, body, and garb were in harmony, and calculated to
impress the coldest imagination. He wore a sort of sleeveless gown of
black cloth, fastened in front, and falling to the calf, leaving the
neck bare with no collar. His doublet and boots were likewise black.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Light of Western Stars by Zane Grey: day came when she knew this to be true. The spiritual tidings
reached her, not subtly as so many divinations had come, but in a
clear, vital flash of certainty. Then she suffered. She burned
inwardly, and the nature of that deep fire showed through her
eyes. She kept to herself, waiting, waiting for her fears to be
confirmed.
At times she broke out in wrath at the circumstances she had
failed to control, at herself, at Stewart.
"He might have learned from Ambrose!" she exclaimed, sick with a
bitterness she knew was not consistent with her pride. She
recalled Christine's trenchant exposition of Ambrose's wooing:
The Light of Western Stars |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: loved by his father with a deep and silent strength, as if
whatever was good and happy in his own nature had been
transferred to his child, carrying his affections with it. Even
Dorcas, though loving and beloved, was far less dear to him; for
Reuben's secret thoughts and insulated emotions had gradually
made him a selfish man, and he could no longer love deeply except
where he saw or imagined some reflection or likeness of his own
mind. In Cyrus he recognized what he had himself been in other
days; and at intervals he seemed to partake of the boy's spirit,
and to be revived with a fresh and happy life. Reuben was
accompanied by his son in the expedition, for the purpose of
Mosses From An Old Manse |
