| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: Proclaims the nobles and proclaims the land;
So that he knows it who was never there.
I swear to you, so may my upward route
Prosper! your honour'd nation not impairs
The value of her coffer and her sword.
Nature and use give her such privilege,
That while the world is twisted from his course
By a bad head, she only walks aright,
And has the evil way in scorn." He then:
"Now pass thee on: sev'n times the tired sun
Revisits not the couch, which with four feet
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: "As you are thinking of raising a magnificent monument to the memory
of your friend, sir, you have only to leave it all to me; I will
undertake--"
"What is all this? What is all this?" asked La Sauvage. "Has M.
Schmucke ordered something? Who may you be?"
"I represent the firm of Sonet, my dear madame, the biggest monumental
stone-masons in Paris," said the person in black, handing a business-
card to the stalwart Sauvage.
"Very well, that will do. Some one will go with you when the time
comes; but you must not take advantage of the gentleman's condition
now. You can quite see that he is not himself----"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: literature. He always skipped the "literary notices" in the
papers and he had small leisure for the intermittent pleasures of
the periodical. He had therefore no notion of the prolonged
reverberations which the "Aubyn Letters" had awakened in the
precincts of criticism. When the book ceased to be talked about
he supposed it had ceased to be read; and this apparent subsidence
of the agitation about it brought the reassuring sense that he had
exaggerated its vitality. The conviction, if it did not ease his
conscience, at least offered him the relative relief of obscurity:
he felt like an offender taken down from the pillory and thrust
into the soothing darkness of a cell.
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