| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: stage of the other house; as a new one he probably wouldn't have so
much as noticed her. He would have liked to invent something, get
her to make-believe with him that some passage of a romantic or
critical kind HAD originally occurred. He was really almost
reaching out in imagination--as against time--for something that
would do, and saying to himself that if it didn't come this sketch
of a fresh start would show for quite awkwardly bungled. They
would separate, and now for no second or no third chance. They
would have tried and not succeeded. Then it was, just at the turn,
as he afterwards made it out to himself, that, everything else
failing, she herself decided to take up the case and, as it were,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: 'No, but only to those who know how to use a horse?'
ERYXIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And so, too, physic is not useful to every one, but only to him
who knows how to use it?
ERYXIAS: True.
SOCRATES: And the same is the case with everything else?
ERYXIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then gold and silver and all the other elements which are
supposed to make up wealth are only useful to the person who knows how to
use them?
ERYXIAS: Exactly.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: his natural assurance, Nathan never dared, during the rest of the
winter, either to speak to the countess or even approach her.
But he opened his heart to Blondet; to him he talked of his Laura and
his Beatrice, apropos of Madame de Vandenesse. He even made a
paraphrase of the following beautiful passage from the pen of
Theophile Gautier, one of the most remarkable poets of our day:--
"'Ideala, flower of heaven's own blue, with heart of gold, whose
fibrous roots, softer, a thousandfold, than fairy tresses, strike to
our souls and drink their purest essence; flower most sweet and
bitter! thou canst not be torn away without the heart's blood flowing,
without thy bruised stems sweating with scarlet tears. Ah! cursed
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