| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: MISS NEVILLE. I find it impossible. My spirits are so sunk with the
agitations I have suffered, that I am unable to face any new danger.
Two or three years' patience will at last crown us with happiness.
HASTINGS. Such a tedious delay is worse than inconstancy. Let us fly,
my charmer. Let us date our happiness from this very moment. Perish
fortune! Love and content will increase what we possess beyond a
monarch's revenue. Let me prevail!
MISS NEVILLE. No, Mr. Hastings, no. Prudence once more comes to my
relief, and I will obey its dictates. In the moment of passion fortune
may be despised, but it ever produces a lasting repentance. I'm
resolved to apply to Mr. Hardcastle's compassion and justice for
She Stoops to Conquer |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: Thinking of her daughter brought her back to the father; she saw him
sinking by degrees, day after day, down to the social mire, and even
dismissed some day from his appointment. The idea of her idol's fall,
with a vague vision of the disasters prophesied by Crevel, was such a
terror to the poor woman, that she became rapt in the contemplation
like an ecstatic.
Cousin Betty, from time to time, as she chatted with Hortense, looked
round to see when they might return to the drawing-room; but her young
cousin was pelting her with questions, and at the moment when the
Baroness opened the glass door she did not happen to be looking.
Lisbeth Fischer, though the daughter of the eldest of the three
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther: possible expense, diligence, and perseverance, while he never
thought of the structure itself, but pleased himself and made his
boast of these useless preparations and props, should we not all
pity his madness and think that, at the cost thus thrown away,
some great building might have been raised?
Thus, too, we do not contemn works and ceremonies--nay, we set
the highest value on them; but we contemn the belief in works,
which no one should consider to constitute true righteousness, as
do those hypocrites who employ and throw away their whole life in
the pursuit of works, and yet never attain to that for the sake
of which the works are done. As the Apostle says, they are "ever
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