| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: thinking. It was out of his power; his fashionable life bore him far
away from labour and thought. His work grew cold and colourless; and
he betook himself with indifference to the reproduction of monotonous,
well-worn forms. The eternally spick-and-span uniforms, and the
so-to-speak buttoned-up faces of the government officials, soldiers,
and statesmen, did not offer a wide field for his brush: it forgot how
to render superb draperies and powerful emotion and passion. Of
grouping, dramatic effect and its lofty connections, there was
nothing. In face of him was only a uniform, a corsage, a dress-coat,
and before which the artist feels cold and all imagination vanishes.
Even his own peculiar merits were no longer visible in his works, yet
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Jungle Tales of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: but not Tarzan of the Apes. In such matters he was fastidious.
From his hands he washed every trace of the repugnant
scent of the Gomangani, and from his face the blood of
the kid. Rising, he stretched himself not unlike some huge,
lazy cat, climbed into a near-by tree and fell asleep.
When he awoke it was dark, though a faint luminosity still
tinged the western heavens. A lion moaned and coughed
as it strode through the jungle toward water. It was
approaching the drinking hole. Tarzan grinned sleepily,
changed his position and fell asleep again.
When the blacks of Mbonga, the chief, reached their village
The Jungle Tales of Tarzan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: has sense and judgment, she has tripped you over into the slough of
self-interest and lets you know it," cried Honor. "She deserves an
answer, a sincere and loyal and frank answer, and, above all, the
honest expression of your thought. Examine yourself! sound your heart
and purge it of its meannesses. What would Moliere's Alceste say?"
And La Briere, having started from the boulevard Poissoniere, walked
so slowly, absorbed in these reflections, that he was more than an
hour in reaching the boulevard des Capucines. Then he followed the
quays, which led him to the Cour des Comptes, situated in that time
close to the Saint-Chapelle. Instead of beginning on the accounts as
he should have done, he remained at the mercy of his perplexities.
Modeste Mignon |
