| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: true. He is content to find that things are not what they
seem, and broadly generalises from it that they do not exist
at all. He sees our virtues are not what they pretend they
are; and, on the strength of that, he denies us the
possession of virtue altogether. He has learnt the first
lesson, that no man is wholly good; but he has not even
suspected that there is another equally true, to wit, that no
man is wholly bad. Like the inmate of a coloured star, he
has eyes for one colour alone. He has a keen scent after
evil, but his nostrils are plugged against all good, as
people plugged their nostrils before going about the streets
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: married have for the most part chosen quite insignificant wives. Well,
those wives governed them, as the Emperor governs us; and if they were
not loved, they were at least respected. I like secrets--especially
those which concern women--well enough to have amused myself by
seeking the clue to the riddle. Well, my sweet child, those worthy
women had the gift of analyzing their husbands' nature; instead of
taking fright, like you, at their superiority, they very acutely noted
the qualities they lacked, and either by possessing those qualities,
or by feigning to possess them, they found means of making such a
handsome display of them in their husbands' eyes that in the end they
impressed them. Also, I must tell you, all these souls which appear so
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: fated to listen as the neophyte of early Christian times listened to
the epistles of an apostle.
"My friend," began Diane, "my mother, who still lives at Uxelles,
married me in 1814, when I was seventeen years old (you see how old I
am now!) to Monsieur de Maufrigneuse, not out of affection for me, but
out of regard for him. She discharged her debt to the only man she had
ever loved, for the happiness she had once received from him. Oh! you
need not be astonished at so horrible a conspiracy; it frequently
takes place. Many women are more lovers than mothers, though the
majority are more mothers than wives. The two sentiments, love and
motherhood, developed as they are by our manners and customs, often
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