| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: that act is the most important of all which society requires of us.
Remember to study at your leisure the character of the woman who is to
be your partner; but consult me too, I will judge of her myself. A
lack of union between husband and wife, from whatever cause, leads to
terrible misfortune; sooner or later we are always punished for
contravening the social law.--But I will write to you on this subject
from Florence. A father who has the honor of presiding over a supreme
court of justice must not have to blush in the presence of his son.
Good-bye."
PARIS, February 1830-January 1842.
ADDENDUM
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne: quantity of copper nails. It was so much work saved for the smiths, but the
carpenters had much to do.
Shipbuilding was interrupted for a week for the harvest, the haymaking,
and the gathering in of the different crops on the plateau. This work
finished, every moment was devoted to finishing the schooner. when night
came the workmen were really quite exhausted. So as not to lose any time
they had changed the hours for their meals; they dined at twelve o'clock,
and only had their supper when daylight failed them. They then ascended to
Granite House, when they were always ready to go to bed.
Sometimes, however, when the conversation bore on some interesting
subject the hour for sleep was delayed for a time. The colonists then spoke
The Mysterious Island |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: his head, believed, I think, that I had invented Tyler expressly for
his discomfiture; for the stress I laid on Tyler's claims must have
seemed unaccountable and perhaps malicious on the assumption that he
was to me a mere name among the thousands of names in the British
Museum catalogue. Therefore I make it clear that I had and have
personal reasons for remembering Tyler, and for regarding myself as in
some sort charged with the duty of reminding the world of his work. I
am sorry for his sake that Mary's portrait is fair, and that Mr W. H.
has veered round again from Pembroke to Southampton; but even so his
work was not wasted: it is by exhausting all the hypotheses that we
reach the verifiable one; and after all, the wrong road always leads
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