| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: After all, it never would have happened if I had not met you.
You filled me with a wild desire to know everything about life.
For days after I met you, something seemed to throb in my veins.
As I lounged in the park, or strolled down Piccadilly, I used
to look at every one who passed me and wonder, with a mad curiosity,
what sort of lives they led. Some of them fascinated me.
Others filled me with terror. There was an exquisite poison in the air.
I had a passion for sensations. . . . Well, one evening about seven
o'clock, I determined to go out in search of some adventure.
I felt that this grey monstrous London of ours, with its myriads of people,
its sordid sinners, and its splendid sins, as you once phrased it,
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: that boudoir where, one year earlier, she had been surprised into
comparing him with her husband. This time she received him alone,
without perceiving the slightest danger in so doing.
"My dear Paz," she said, with the condescending familiarity of the
great to their inferiors, "if you love Adam as you say you do, you
will do a thing which he will not ask of you, but which I, his wife,
do not hesitate to exact."
"About Malaga?" said Thaddeus, with bitterness in his heart.
"Well, yes," she said; "if you wish to end your days in this house and
continue good friends with us, you must give her up. How an old
soldier--"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: that know me. Breathe not to any human soul that thou didst ever
call me husband! Here, on this wild outskirt of the earth, I
shall pitch my tent; for, elsewhere a wanderer, and isolated
from human interests, I find here a woman, a man, a child,
amongst whom and myself there exist the closest ligaments. No
matter whether of love or hate: no matter whether of right or
wrong! Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me. My home is
where thou art and where he is. But betray me not!"
"Wherefore dost thou desire it?" inquired Hester, shrinking, she
hardly knew why, from this secret bond. "Why not announce
The Scarlet Letter |
