| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: as an ordinance that a man should be ashamed to be seen visiting the
chamber of his wife, whether going in or coming out. When they did
meet under such restraint the mutual longing of these lovers could not
but be increased, and the fruit which might spring from such
intercourse would tend to be more robust than theirs whose affections
are cloyed by satiety. By a farther step in the same direction he
refused to allow marriages to be contracted[6] at any period of life
according to the fancy of the parties concerned. Marriage, as he
ordained it, must only take place in the prime of bodily vigour,[7]
this too being, as he believed, a condition conducive to the
production of healthy offspring. Or again, to meet the case which
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: studied her, I detected signs of an inmost thought, in spite of the
blooming health that glowed in her dimpled face. There was in her soul
some element of ruth or of hope; her manner suggested a secret, like
the expression of devout souls who pray in excess, or of a girl who
has killed her child and for ever hears its last cry. Nevertheless,
she was simple and clumsy in her ways; her vacant smile had nothing
criminal in it, and you would have pronounced her innocent only from
seeing the large red and blue checked kerchief that covered her
stalwart bust, tucked into the tight-laced bodice of a lilac- and
white-striped gown. 'No,' said I to myself, 'I will not quit Vendome
without knowing the whole history of la Grande Breteche. To achieve
La Grande Breteche |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne: gorod.
Michael Strogoff was not mistaken. The two men were
one and the same. It was under the garb of a Zingari,
mingling with the band of Sangarre, that Ivan Ogareff had
been able to leave the town of Nijni-Novgorod, where he
had gone to seek his confidants. Sangarre and her Zingari,
well paid spies, were absolutely devoted to him. It was
he who, during the night, on the fair-ground had uttered
that singular sentence, which Michael Strogoff could not
understand; it was he who was voyaging on board the
Caucasus, with the whole of the Bohemian band; it was he
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