| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: would none of the foul deed, the fair Clytemnestra, for she
had a good understanding. Moreover there was with her a
minstrel, whom the son of Atreus straitly charged as he
went to Troy to have a care of his wife. But when at last
the doom of the gods bound her to her ruin, then did
Aegisthus carry the minstrel to a lonely isle, and left him
there to be the prey and spoil of birds; while as for her,
he led her to his house, a willing lover with a willing
lady. And he burnt many thigh slices upon the holy altars
of the gods, and hung up many offerings, woven-work and
gold, seeing that he had accomplished a great deed, beyond
The Odyssey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Extending o'er the dark-grey sky?
With it I'm sure we may dispense,
The colour'd cheat! The vain pretence!"
Dame Iris straightway thus replied:
"Dost dare my beauty to deride?
In realms of space God station'd me
A type of better worlds to be
To eyes that from life's sorrows rove
In cheerful hope to Heav'n above,
And, through the mists that hover here
God and his precepts blest revere.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: with Monsieur Grandet for thirty-five years. Though she received only
sixty francs a year in wages, she was supposed to be one of the
richest serving-women in Saumur. Those sixty francs, accumulating
through thirty-five years, had recently enabled her to invest four
thousand francs in an annuity with Maitre Cruchot. This result of her
long and persistent economy seemed gigantic. Every servant in the
town, seeing that the poor sexagenarian was sure of bread for her old
age, was jealous of her, and never thought of the hard slavery through
which it had been won.
At twenty-two years of age the poor girl had been unable to find a
situation, so repulsive was her face to almost every one. Yet the
Eugenie Grandet |
