| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: can furnish a life of such rapturous enjoyment? But alas, it is
too soon over! For what ought man to sigh, could such felicity
but last for ever? Ours shared the common fate--in being of
short duration, and followed by lasting regrets.
"I had realised by play such a considerable sum of money, that I
thought of investing a portion of it. My servants were not
ignorant of my good luck, particularly my valet and Manon's own
maid, before whom we often talked without any reserve. The maid
was handsome, and my valet in love with her. They knew they had
to deal with a young and inexperienced couple, whom they fancied
they could impose upon without much difficulty. They laid a
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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: his indifference, I was individually the connoisseur he was most
working for. I was therefore to be a good boy and not try to peep
under the curtain before the show was ready: I should enjoy it all
the more if I sat very still.
I did my best to sit very still, but I couldn't help giving a jump
on seeing in THE TIMES, after I had been a week or two in Munich
and before, as I knew, Corvick had reached London, the
announcement of the sudden death of poor Mrs. Erme. I instantly,
by letter, appealed to Gwendolen for particulars, and she wrote me
that her mother had yielded to long-threatened failure of the
heart. She didn't say, but I took the liberty of reading into her
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: cruder acquisitive appetites the child will steal and lie and be a
nuisance to you; and that if you encourage its appetite for perfection
and teach it to attach a peculiar sacredness to it and place it before
the other appetites, it will be a much nicer child and you will have a
much easier job, at which point you will, in spite of your
pseudoscientific jargon, find yourself back in the old-fashioned
religious teaching as deep as Dr. Watts and in fact fathoms deeper.
Moral Instruction Leagues
And now the voices of our Moral Instruction Leagues will be lifted,
asking whether there is any reason why the appetite for perfection
should not be cultivated in rationally scientific terms instead of
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