| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: forgiveness which I may not grant; to mark the writhing of the
assassin and the last shriek of his victim; to listen to appalling
noises and fearful silence, the silence of a father devouring his dead
sons; to wonder at the laughter of the damned; to look for some human
form among the livid heaps wrung and trampled by crime; to learn words
such as living men may not hear without dying; to call perpetually on
the dead, and always to accuse and condemn!--Is that living?"
"Cease!" cried Godefroid; "I cannot see you or hear you any further!
My reason wanders, my eyes are dim. You light a fire within me which
consumes me."
"And yet I must go on!" said the senior, waving his hand with a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: where music was playing, a shabby old cab drove up beside ours.
The horse was an old worn-out chestnut, with an ill-kept coat,
and bones that showed plainly through it, the knees knuckled over,
and the fore-legs were very unsteady. I had been eating some hay,
and the wind rolled a little lock of it that way, and the poor creature
put out her long thin neck and picked it up, and then turned
and looked about for more. There was a hopeless look in the dull eye
that I could not help noticing, and then, as I was thinking
where I had seen that horse before, she looked full at me and said,
"Black Beauty, is that you?"
It was Ginger! but how changed! The beautifully arched and glossy neck
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Do we shut from ourselves our own salvation, --
Or what do we do! I tell you, Dominie,
There are times in the lives of us poor devils
When heaven and hell get mixed. Though conscience
May come like a whisper of Christ to warn us
Away from our sins, it is lost or laughed at, --
And then we fall. And for all who have fallen --
Even for him -- I hold no malice,
Nor much compassion: a mightier mercy
Than mine must shrive him. -- And I -- I am going
Into the light? -- or into the darkness?
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