| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: examine the face of nature from one extremity of the earth to the
other."
"All this," said the Prince, "is much to be desired, but I am
afraid that no man will be able to breathe in these regions of
speculation and tranquillity. I have been told that respiration is
difficult upon lofty mountains, yet from these precipices, though
so high as to produce great tenuity of air, it is very easy to
fall; therefore I suspect that from any height where life can be
supported, there may be danger of too quick descent."
"Nothing," replied the artist, "will ever be attempted if all
possible objections must be first overcome. If you will favour my
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: opposite effect, but his message may fairly be paraphrased. "Have
patience; I want to see, as it breaks on you, the face you'll
make!" "Tellement envie de voir ta tete!" - that was what I had to
sit down with. I can certainly not be said to have sat down, for I
seem to remember myself at this time as rattling constantly between
the little house in Chelsea and my own. Our impatience,
Gwendolen's and mine, was equal, but I kept hoping her light would
be greater. We all spent during this episode, for people of our
means, a great deal of money in telegrams and cabs, and I counted
on the receipt of news from Rapallo immediately after the junction
of the discoverer with the discovered. The interval seemed an age,
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: Mademoiselle Gamard spent her evenings by rotation in six or eight
different houses. Whether it was that she disliked being obliged to go
out to seek society, and considered that at her age she had a right to
expect some return; or that her pride was wounded at receiving no
company in her house; or that her self-love craved the compliments she
saw her various hostesses receive,--certain it is that her whole
ambition was to make her salon a centre towards which a given number
of persons should nightly make their way with pleasure. One morning as
she left Saint-Gatien, after Birotteau and his friend Mademoiselle
Salomon had spent a few evenings with her and with the faithful and
patient Troubert, she said to certain of her good friends whom she met
|
