The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: The marquise smiled. That smile annoyed Eugene.
"Madame," he said, "can you still believe in an offence I have not
committed? I earnestly hope that chance may not enable you to discover
the name of the person who ought to have read that letter."
"What! can it be STILL Madame de Nucingen?" cried Madame de Listomere,
more eager to penetrate that secret than to revenge herself for the
impertinence of the young man's speeches.
Eugene colored. A man must be more than twenty-five years of age not
to blush at being taxed with a fidelity that women laugh at--in order,
perhaps, not to show that they envy it. However, he replied with
tolerable self-possession:--
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from King James Bible: bird, and in the running water, and sprinkle the house seven times:
LEV 14:52 And he shall cleanse the house with the blood of the bird,
and with the running water, and with the living bird, and with the cedar
wood, and with the hyssop, and with the scarlet:
LEV 14:53 But he shall let go the living bird out of the city into the
open fields, and make an atonement for the house: and it shall be clean.
LEV 14:54 This is the law for all manner of plague of leprosy, and
scall,
LEV 14:55 And for the leprosy of a garment, and of a house,
LEV 14:56 And for a rising, and for a scab, and for a bright spot:
LEV 14:57 To teach when it is unclean, and when it is clean: this is
 King James Bible |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: equipment for a literary life. Perhaps I should not have used the
word literary. That word presupposes an intimacy of acquaintance
with letters, a turn of mind and a manner of feeling to which I
dare lay no claim. I only love letters; but the love of letters
does not make a literary man, any more than the love of the sea
makes a seaman. And it is very possible, too, that I love the
letters in the same way a literary man may love the sea he looks
at from the shore--a scene of great endeavour and of great
achievements changing the face of the world, the great open way
to all sorts of undiscovered countries. No, perhaps I had better
say that the life at sea--and I don't mean a mere taste of it,
 Some Reminiscences |