| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: comparisons between the suitors who presented themselves and the
husband who had loved her so sincerely and so well.
She had thus reached, through mistaken calculations and disappointed
hopes, that period of life when women have no other part to take in
life than that of mother; a part which involves the sacrifice of
themselves to their children, the placing of their interests outside
of self upon another household,--the last refuge of human affections.
Madame Evangelista divined Paul's nature intuitively, and hid her own
from his perception. Paul was the very man she desired for a son-in-
law, for the responsible editor of her future power. He belonged,
through his mother, to the family of Maulincour, and the old Baronne
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: Henchard's lips half parted to begin an explanation. But he
shut them up like a vice, and uttered not a sound. How
should he, there and then, set before her with any effect
the palliatives of his great faults--that he had himself
been deceived in her identity at first, till informed by her
mother's letter that his own child had died; that, in the
second accusation, his lie had been the last desperate throw
of a gamester who loved her affection better than his own
honour? Among the many hindrances to such a pleading not the
least was this, that he did not sufficiently value himself
to lessen his sufferings by strenuous appeal or elaborate
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: then I must go back, you know. That's the end of my move.'
`Thank you very much,' said Alice. `May I help you off with
your helmet?' It was evidently more than he could manage by
himself; however, she managed to shake him out of it at last.
`Now one can breathe more easily,' said the Knight, putting
back his shaggy hair with both hands, and turning his gentle face
and large mild eyes to Alice. She thought she had never seen
such a strange-looking soldier in all her life.
He was dressed in tin armour, which seemed to fit him very
badly, and he had a queer-shaped little deal box fastened across
his shoulder, upside-down, and with the lid hanging open. Alice
Through the Looking-Glass |
