The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: "So puddled as it is with favouritism."
I tried the mother's heart. Shame might befall
Melissa, knowing, saying not she knew:
Her answer was "Leave me to deal with that."
I spoke of war to come and many deaths,
And she replied, her duty was to speak,
And duty duty, clear of consequences.
I grew discouraged, Sir; but since I knew
No rock so hard but that a little wave
May beat admission in a thousand years,
I recommenced; "Decide not ere you pause.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: added the notary--without being aware that Goupil is a corruption of
the word vulpes, a fox.
So Mesdames Massin and Cremiere with their husbands, the post master
and Desire, together with the Nemours doctor and Bongrand, made an
unusual and noisy party in the doctor's salon. As the abbe entered he
heard the sound of the piano. Poor Ursula was just finishing a sonata
of Beethoven's. With girlish mischief she had chosen that grand music,
which must be studied to be understood, for the purpose of disgusting
these women with the thing they coveted. The finer the music the less
ignorant persons like it. So, when the door opened and the abbe's
venerable head appeared they all cried out: "Ah! here's Monsieur
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: accustom ourselves to the fact that for our epoch histories of that
kind are meaningless.
On the other question, how the battle of Borodino and the
preceding battle of Shevardino were fought, there also exists a
definite and well-known, but quite false, conception. All the
historians describe the affair as follows:
The Russian army, they say, in its retreat from Smolensk sought
out for itself the best position for a general engagement and found
such a position at Borodino.
The Russians, they say, fortified this position in advance on the
left of the highroad (from Moscow to Smolensk) and almost at a right
 War and Peace |