| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: her for a thousand francs. The portrait of the Princess Goritza was
alone worth that sum. Two years later, a young dandy, who was making a
collection of the fine snuff-boxes of the last century, obtained from
Madame du Val-Noble the chevalier's treasure. The charming confidant
of many a love and the pleasure of an old age is now on exhibition in
a species of private museum. If the dead could know what happens after
them, the chevalier's head would surely blush upon its left cheek.
If this history has no other effect than to inspire the possessors of
precious relics with holy fear, and induce them to make codicils to
secure these touching souvenirs of joys that are no more by
bequeathing them to loving hands, it will have done an immense service
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: in reality by my secret compassion. Mrs. Fyne brushed them aside,
with the semi-conscious egoism of all safe, established, existences.
They had known each other so little. Just three weeks. And of that
time, too short for the birth of any serious sentiment, the first
week had to be deducted. They would hardly look at each other to
begin with. Flora barely consented to acknowledge Captain Anthony's
presence. Good morning--good night--that was all--absolutely the
whole extent of their intercourse. Captain Anthony was a silent
man, completely unused to the society of girls of any sort and so
shy in fact that he avoided raising his eyes to her face at the
table. It was perfectly absurd. It was even inconvenient,
Chance |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: generations from the ape, his ancestor. Not ten thousand. And
that ape again, not a score of thousands from the monkey, his
forebear. A man's body, his bodily powers, are just the body
and powers of an ape, a little improved, a little adapted to
novel needs. That brings me to my point. CAN HIS MIND AND
WILL BE ANYTHING BETTER? For a few generations, a few
hundreds at most, knowledge and wide thought have flared out
on the darknesses of life. . . . But the substance of man is
ape still. He may carry a light in his brain, but his
instincts move in the darkness. Out of that darkness he draws
his motives."
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