| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: in the carriage. "And so for want of ten or twelve thousand francs,
you were about to take your life; you are a child, you know neither
men nor things. A man's future is worth the value that he chooses to
set upon it, and you value yours at twelve thousand francs! Well, I
will give more than that for you any time. As for your brother-in-
law's imprisonment, it is the merest trifle. If this dear M. Sechard
has made a discovery, he will be a rich man some day, and a rich man
has never been imprisoned for debt. You do not seem to me to be strong
in history. History is of two kinds--there is the official history
taught in schools, a lying compilation ad usum delphini; and there is
the secret history which deals with the real causes of events--a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lady Susan by Jane Austen: and my wishes, he will be laid up with the gout many weeks. During his
absence we shall be able to chuse our own society, and to have true
enjoyment. I would ask you to Edward Street, but that once he forced from
me a kind of promise never to invite you to my house; nothing but my being
in the utmost distress for money should have extorted it from me. I can get
you, however, a nice drawing-room apartment in Upper Seymour Street, and we
may be always together there or here; for I consider my promise to Mr.
Johnson as comprehending only (at least in his absence) your not sleeping
in the house. Poor Mainwaring gives me such histories of his wife's
jealousy. Silly woman to expect constancy from so charming a man! but she
always was silly--intolerably so in marrying him at all, she the heiress of
Lady Susan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare: PALAMON.
Yes.
ARCITE.
Am not I liable to those affections,
Those joyes, greifes, angers, feares, my friend shall suffer?
PALAMON.
Ye may be.
ARCITE.
Why, then, would you deale so cunningly,
So strangely, so vnlike a noble kinesman,
To love alone? speake truely: doe you thinke me
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