| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: become of him? Is he alive?...
"When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but
divine love cannot change. No, neither death nor anything else can
destroy it. It is the very essence of the soul. Yet how many people
have I hated in my life? And of them all, I loved and hated none as
I did her." And he vividly pictured to himself Natasha, not as he
had done in the past with nothing but her charms which gave him
delight, but for the first time picturing to himself her soul. And
he understood her feelings, her sufferings, shame, and remorse. He now
understood for the first time all the cruelty of his rejection of her,
the cruelty of his rupture with her. "If only it were possible for
War and Peace |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane: youth's friend lay down, buried his face in his
154
arms, and almost instantly, it seemed, he was in a
deep sleep.
The youth leaned his breast against the
brown dirt and peered over at the woods and up
and down the line. Curtains of trees interfered
with his ways of vision. He could see the low
line of trenches but for a short distance. A few
idle flags were perched on the dirt hills. Behind
them were rows of dark bodies with a few heads
The Red Badge of Courage |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: purple wealth above the lichen-tinted walls, and when there were
calves still young enough to want bucketfuls of fragrant milk.
People were not so busy then as they must become when the full
cheese-making and the mowing had set in; and besides, it was a time
when a light bridal dress could be worn with comfort and seen to
advantage.
Happily the sunshine fell more warmly than usual on the lilac tufts
the morning that Eppie was married, for her dress was a very light
one. She had often thought, though with a feeling of renunciation,
that the perfection of a wedding-dress would be a white cotton, with
the tiniest pink sprig at wide intervals; so that when Mrs. Godfrey
Silas Marner |
