| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: upon the other with illuminating fixity. "You have it
all--all there. Marie got tired of the smooth people,
the usual people. There was the promise of adventure,
and risk, and peril, and the grand emotions with the big,
dark brute."
"It isn't a happy story--this parallel that you pick out,"
commented Celia, absently.
"Happy! Pah!" retorted Edith, with spirit. "Who knows if it
wasn't the only really happy thing in her life? The snobs
and prigs all scold her and preach sermons at her--they did
it in her lifetime: they do it now----"Oh come, I'm neither
 The Market-Place |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: arise.
4. Therefore the sage knows (these things) of himself, but does not
parade (his knowledge); loves, but does not (appear to set a) value
on, himself. And thus he puts the latter alternative away and makes
choice of the former.
73. 1. He whose boldness appears in his daring (to do wrong, in
defiance of the laws) is put to death; he whose boldness appears in
his not daring (to do so) lives on. Of these two cases the one
appears to be advantageous, and the other to be injurious. But
When Heaven's anger smites a man,
Who the cause shall truly scan?
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: to Paris to give herself the luxury of a bitter revenge; she thought
of nothing but avenging Savarus by torturing her rival.
Mademoiselle de Watteville had been declared legally of age; she was,
in fact, not far from one-and-twenty. Her mother, to settle with her
finally, had resigned her claims on les Rouxey, and the daughter had
signed a release for all the inheritance of the Baron de Watteville.
Rosalie encouraged her mother to marry the Comte de Soulas and settle
all her own fortune on him.
"Let us each be perfectly free," she said.
Madame de Soulas, who had been uneasy as to her daughter's intentions,
was touched by this liberality, and made her a present of six thousand
 Albert Savarus |