| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: fell to his usual good discourses. He congratulated my having
a space yet allowed me for repentance, whereas the state of
those six poor creatures was determined, and they were now
past the offers of salvation; he earnestly pressed me to retain
the same sentiments of the things of life that I had when I had
a view of eternity; and at the end of all told me I should not
conclude that all was over, that a reprieve was not a pardon,
that he could not yet answer for the effects of it; however, I
had this mercy, that I had more time given me, and that it was
my business to improve that time.
This discourse, though very seasonable, left a kind of sadness
Moll Flanders |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Koran: what did cover it! The sight swerved not nor wandered. He saw then the
greatest of the signs of his Lord.
Have ye considered Allat and Al 'Huzza, and Manat the other third?
Shall there be male offspring for Him and female for you? That were an
unfair division! They are but names which ye have named, ye and your
fathers! God has sent down no authority for them! They do but follow
suspicion and what their souls lust after!-And yet there has come to
them guidance from their Lord.
Shall man have what he desires? But God's is the hereafter and the
present!
How many an angel in the heaven!-their intercession avails not at
The Koran |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: light which actually illuminated their smoky tones and vivified the
chaos. The soul of this dear man, which saw and revealed so many
things divine, shone like the sun. His laugh, so frank, so guileless
at seeing one of his Saint-Cecilias, shed sparkles of youth and gaiety
and innocence about him. The treasures he poured from the inner to the
outer were like a mantle with which he covered his squalid life. The
most supercilious parvenu would have felt it ignoble to care for the
frame in which this glorious old apostle of the musical religion lived
and moved and had his being.
"Hey! by what good luck do I see you here, dear Madame la comtesse?"
he said. "Must I sing the canticle of Simeon at my age?" (This idea so
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