| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: laborious communication of falsehood; he lies with his tail, he
lies with his eye, he lies with his protesting paw; and when he
rattles his dish or scratches at the door his purpose is other than
appears. But he has some apology to offer for the vice. Many of
the signs which form his dialect have come to bear an arbitrary
meaning, clearly understood both by his master and himself; yet
when a new want arises he must either invent a new vehicle of
meaning or wrest an old one to a different purpose; and this
necessity frequently recurring must tend to lessen his idea of the
sanctity of symbols. Meanwhile the dog is clear in his own
conscience, and draws, with a human nicety, the distinction between
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: by tears.
"Well, then," he cried, beside himself, "take my life, but dry those
tears."
"Oh, my love! my love!" she exclaimed in a stifled voice: "those are
the words, the accents, the looks I have longed for, to allow me to
prefer your happiness to mine. But," she added, "I ask one more proof
of your love, which you say is so great. I wish to stay here only so
long as may be needed to show the company that you are mine. I will
not even drink a glass of water in the house of a woman who has twice
tried to kill me, who is now, perhaps, plotting mischief against us,"
and she showed the marquis the floating corner of Madame du Gua's
The Chouans |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: her a creature to lend herself to such vile
suggestions. Her shame weighed on her like a physical
oppression: the roof and walls seemed to be closing in
on her, and she was seized by the impulse to get away,
under the open sky, where there would be room to
breathe. She went to the front door, and as she did so
Lucius Harney opened it.
He looked graver and less confident than usual,
and for a moment or two neither of them spoke.
Then he held out his hand. "Are you going out?" he
asked. "May I come in?"
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