| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis: She hears a voice that never was.
ACROSS THE NIGHT
MUCH listening through the silences,
Much staring through the night,
And lo! the dumb blind distances
Are bridged with speech and sight!
Magician Thought, informed of Love,
Hath fixed her on the air--
Oh, Love and I laughed down the fates
And clasped her, here as there!
Across the eerie silences
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: rarer powers to light, while a provincial life debased the small
change of her wit from day to day. Monsieur de la Baudraye, on the
contrary, devoid of soul, of strength, and of wit, was fated to figure
as a man of character, simply by pursuing a plan of conduct which he
was too feeble to change.
There was in their lives a first phase, lasting six years, during
which Dinah, alas! became utterly provincial. In Paris there are
several kinds of women: the duchess and the financier's wife, the
ambassadress and the consul's wife, the wife of the minister who is a
minister, and of him who is no longer a minister; then there is the
lady--quite the lady--of the right bank of the Seine and of the left.
The Muse of the Department |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Economist by Xenophon: exists not. Anyhow, you are not to blame for this," I added; "mine the
fault was who handed over to your care the things without assigning
them their places. Had I done so, you would have known not only where
to put but where to find them.[2] After all, my wife, there is nothing
in human life so serviceable, nought so beautiful as order.[3]
[1] "Vetus proverbium," Cic. ap. Columellam, xii. 2, 3; Nobbe, 236,
fr. 6.
[2] Lit. "so that you might know not only where to put," etc.
[3] Or, "order and arrangement." So Cic. ap. Col. xii. 2, 4,
"dispositione atque ordine."
"For instance, what is a chorus?--a band composed of human beings, who
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