| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: had touched some secret chord that had never been touched before,
but that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to
curious pulses.
Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times.
But music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather
another chaos, that it created in us. Words! Mere words!
How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could
not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them!
They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things,
and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute.
Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: better position on the social ladder, he began to dream of getting rid
of his associates. And now, on obtaining twenty-five thousand francs
from Thuillier, he hoped to treat on the basis of fifty per cent for
the return of his fatal notes by Cerizet.
Unfortunately, this sort of infamous speculation is not an exceptional
fact; it takes place in Paris under various forms too little disguised
for the historian of manners and morals to pass them over unnoticed in
a complete and accurate picture of society in the nineteenth century.
Dutocq, an arrant scoundrel, still owed fifteen thousand francs on his
practice, and lived in hopes of something turning up to keep his head,
as the saying is, above water until the close of 1840. Up to the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: On going home in the evening, Wenceslas found the solution of the
mystery of his release. The porter handed him a thick sealed packet,
containing the schedule of his debts, with a signed receipt affixed at
the bottom of the writ, and accompanied by this letter:--
"MY DEAR WENCESLAS,--I went to fetch you at ten o'clock this
morning to introduce you to a Royal Highness who wishes to see
you. There I learned that the duns had had you conveyed to a
certain little domain--chief town, /Clichy Castle/.
"So off I went to Leon de Lora, and told him, for a joke, that you
could not leave your country quarters for lack of four thousand
francs, and that you would spoil your future prospects if you did
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