| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles: Outwitted in the battlefield of life,
What spite and envy follow in your train!
See, for this crown the State conferred on me.
A gift, a thing I sought not, for this crown
The trusty Creon, my familiar friend,
Hath lain in wait to oust me and suborned
This mountebank, this juggling charlatan,
This tricksy beggar-priest, for gain alone
Keen-eyed, but in his proper art stone-blind.
Say, sirrah, hast thou ever proved thyself
A prophet? When the riddling Sphinx was here
Oedipus Trilogy |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: baron had a presentiment of the opportunity afforded by this windfall.
He determined to keep the letter, which would give him the right to
enter the mysterious house to return it to the strange man, not
doubting that he lived there. Suspicions, vague as the first faint
gleams of daylight, made him fancy relations between this man and
Madame Jules. A jealous lover supposes everything; and it is by
supposing everything and selecting the most probable of their
conjectures that judges, spies, lovers, and observers get at the truth
they are looking for.
"Is the letter for him? Is it from Madame Jules?"
His restless imagination tossed a thousand such questions to him; but
Ferragus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: above her eyelids, and had given her such a mass of chestnut hair,
that she might have hidden under it as under a tent, impenetrable to
the lover's eye--for cheerfulness, which gave quivering animation to
her nostrils, which carved two dimples in her rosy cheeks, and made
her quick to forget her troubles; cheerfulness, the blossom of hope,
which gave her strength to look out without shuddering on the barren
path of life.
The girl's hair was always carefully dressed. After the manner of
Paris needlewomen, her toilet seemed to her quite complete when she
had brushed her hair smooth and tucked up the little short curls that
played on each temple in contrast with the whiteness of her skin. The
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