| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: terrific expression was softened by benignity assumed at will; but a
complexion of impenetrable bronze inspired feelings of repulsion
rather than attachment for the man.
The strange diplomatist looked somewhat like a bishop, for he wore
powder on his long, thick hair, after the fashion of the Prince de
Talleyrand; a gold cross, hanging from a strip of blue ribbon with a
white border, indicated an ecclesiastical dignitary. The outlines
beneath the black silk stockings would not have disgraced an athlete.
The exquisite neatness of his clothes and person revealed an amount of
care which a simple priest, and, above all, a Spanish priest, does not
always take with his appearance. A three-cornered hat lay on the front
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an
end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has
pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to
his "natural superiors," and has left remaining no other nexus
between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash
payment." It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of
religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine
sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It
has resolved personal worth into exchange value. And in place of
the numberless and feasible chartered freedoms, has set up that
 The Communist Manifesto |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: in fact, they limit the journalist, and allow the artist almost
perfect freedom. Here we allow absolute freedom to the journalist,
and entirely limit the artist. English public opinion, that is to
say, tries to constrain and impede and warp the man who makes
things that are beautiful in effect, and compels the journalist to
retail things that are ugly, or disgusting, or revolting in fact,
so that we have the most serious journalists in the world, and the
most indecent newspapers. It is no exaggeration to talk of
compulsion. There are possibly some journalists who take a real
pleasure in publishing horrible things, or who, being poor, look to
scandals as forming a sort of permanent basis for an income. But
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