| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas: woman would go?"
"Oh, my God!" said Kitty, "you know how to represent things
in such a way that you are always in the right. You are
going now to pay your court to her again, and if this time
you succeed in pleasing her in your own name and with your
own face, it will be much worse than before."
Instinct made poor Kitty guess a part of what was to happen.
D'Artagnan reassured her as well as he could, and promised
to remain insensible to the seductions of Milady.
He desired Kitty to tell her mistress that he could not be
more grateful for her kindnesses than he was, and that he
The Three Musketeers |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: gold, one after the other, passed rapidly from his side to mine; he would
look on with affected composure, while inwardly consumed with rage,
more at my success than at his own loss. Well do I remember the fiery
glance, the treacherous pallor that overspread his features when, at a
public festival, we shot for a wager before assembled thousands. He
challenged me, and both nations stood by; Spaniards and Netherlanders
wagered on either side; I was the victor; his ball missed, mine hit the
mark, and the air was rent by acclamations from my friends. His shot now
hits me. Tell him that I know this, that I know him, that the world despises
every trophy that a paltry spirit erects for itself by base and surreptitious
arts. And thou !
Egmont |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: to talk to her, not with absurd compliment, but with an appeal
to her understanding, and sometimes with instructive correction.
What delightful companionship! Mr. Casaubon seemed even unconscious
that trivialities existed, and never handed round that small-talk
of heavy men which is as acceptable as stale bride-cake brought forth
with an odor of cupboard. He talked of what he was interested in,
or else he was silent and bowed with sad civility. To Dorothea
this was adorable genuineness, and religious abstinence from that
artificiality which uses up the soul in the efforts of pretence.
For she looked as reverently at Mr. Casaubon's religious elevation
above herself as she did at his intellect and learning.
Middlemarch |
