| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: he had been seized by Javert and had not resisted; any other man
than himself in like situation would, perhaps, have had some vague
thoughts connected with the rope which Thenardier had given him,
and of the bars of the first cell that he should enter; but, let us
impress it upon the reader, after the Bishop, there had existed in
Jean Valjean a profound hesitation in the presence of any violence,
even when directed against himself.
Suicide, that mysterious act of violence against the unknown which
may contain, in a measure, the death of the soul, was impossible
to Jean Valjean.
At the entrance to the Rue de l'Homme Arme, the carriage halted,
Les Miserables |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: the legend "Sixty-nine." There a few gray-haired men sat and
talked quietly while the classes swept by in panorama of life.
UNDER THE ARC-LIGHT
Then tragedy's emerald eyes glared suddenly at Amory over the
edge of June. On the night after his ride to Lawrenceville a
crowd sallied to New York in quest of adventure, and started back
to Princeton about twelve o'clock in two machines. It had been a
gay party and different stages of sobriety were represented.
Amory was in the car behind; they had taken the wrong road and
lost the way, and so were hurrying to catch up.
It was a clear night and the exhilaration of the road went to
This Side of Paradise |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: vague, fond thoughts; it was like a vision of the dreamed-of bliss of
a better world. And the three, so attuned to each other, lived in
truth such a life as one might picture for them at first sight--the
ordered, simple, and regular life best suited for a child's education.
Both children rose an hour after daybreak and repeated a short prayer,
a habit learned in their babyhood. For seven years the sincere
petition had been put up every morning on their mother's bed, and
begun and ended by a kiss. Then the two brothers went through their
morning toilet as scrupulously as any pretty woman; doubtless they had
been trained in habits of minute attention to the person, so necessary
to health of body and mind, habits in some sort conducive to a sense
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