| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: it was to persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not of risk.
When I yielded, I thought it was to duty, but no duty could be called
in aid here. In marrying a man indifferent to me, all risk
would have been incurred, and all duty violated."
"Perhaps I ought to have reasoned thus," he replied, "but I could not.
I could not derive benefit from the late knowledge I had acquired
of your character. I could not bring it into play; it was overwhelmed,
buried, lost in those earlier feelings which I had been smarting under
year after year. I could think of you only as one who had yielded,
who had given me up, who had been influenced by any one rather than by me.
I saw you with the very person who had guided you in that year of misery.
Persuasion |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: housekeeper named Brigitte informed them that her mistress had shut
herself up in her room and would see no one, not even the servants of
the house. The semi-cloistral existence of the inhabitants of a little
town creates so invincible a habit of analyzing and explaining the
actions of their neighbors, that after compassionating Madame de Dey
(without knowing whether she were happy or unhappy), they proceeded to
search for the reasons of this sudden retreat.
"If she were ill," said the first Inquisitive, "she would have sent
for the doctor; but the doctor has been all day long playing chess
with me. He told me, laughing, that in these days there was but one
malady, and that was incurable."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: pardon luxuries if provided for their own comfort, she neglected
nothing which conduced to their personal enjoyment, and gave them,
more especially, excellent dinners.
Toward seven o'clock on this memorable evening, her guests were all
assembled in a wide circle around the fireplace. The mistress of the
house, sustained in her part by the sympathizing glances of the old
merchant, submitted with wonderful courage to the minute questioning
and stupid, or frivolous, comments of her visitors. At every rap upon
her door, every footfall echoing in the street, she hid her emotions
by starting topics relating to the interests of the town, and she
raised such a lively discussion on the quality of ciders, which was
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