| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: a stranger."
The poet sat down on the bench beside him, and he and Ernest
talked together. Often had the poet held intercourse with the
wittiest and the wisest, but never before with a man like Ernest,
whose thoughts and feelings gushed up with such a natural
freedom, and who made great truths so familiar by his simple
utterance of them. Angels, as had been so often said, seemed to
have wrought with him at his labor in the fields; angels seemed
to have sat with him by the fireside; and, dwelling with angels
as friend with friends, he had imbibed the sublimity of their
ideas, and imbued it with the sweet and lowly charm of household
The Snow Image |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: feathers passing across their lips. Large wings swung shadows around
them, croakings sounded in the air; and as Spendius's cross was the
highest, it was upon his that the first vulture alighted. Then he
turned his face towards Autaritus, and said slowly to him with an
unaccountable smile:
"Do you remember the lions on the road to Sicca?"
"They were our brothers!" replied the Gaul, as he expired.
The Suffet, meanwhile, had bored through the walls and reached the
citadel. The smoke suddenly disappeared before a gust of wind,
discovering the horizon as far as the walls of Carthage; he even
thought that he could distinguish people watching on the platform of
Salammbo |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: into the details of this existence better than any one else would
have done. As he recognized the facts of his life as a child, the
kind young fellow felt neither scorn for disguised misfortune nor
pride in the luxury he had lately conquered for his mother.
"Well, monsieur, I hope you no longer feel the effects of your
fall," said the old lady, rising from an antique armchair that
stood by the chimney, and offering him a seat.
"No, madame. I have come to thank you for the kind care you gave
me, and above all mademoiselle, who heard me fall."
As he uttered this speech, stamped with the exquisite stupidity
given to the mind by the first disturbing symptoms of true love,
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