| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: Banter lurked beneath his simplicity, mocking laughter behind his
tears--for he had tears at need, like any woman nowadays who says
to her husband, "Give me a carriage, or I shall go into a
consumption."
For the merchant the world is a bale of goods or a mass of
circulating bills; for most young men it is a woman, and for a
woman here and there it is a man; for a certain order of mind it
is a salon, a coterie, a quarter of the town, or some single
city; but Don Juan found his world in himself.
This model of grace and dignity, this captivating wit, moored his
bark by every shore; but wherever he was led he was never carried
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: rigidly observed in all their original quaintness. The Van Dyked
man who looked like a Russian Grand Duke (he really was a
chiropodist) had drunk champagne out of the pink satin slipper of
the lady who behaved like an actress (she was forelady at Schmaus'
Wholesale Millinery, eighth floor). The two respectable married
ladies there in the corner had been kissed by each other's
husbands. The slim, Puritan-faced woman in white, with her black
hair so demurely parted and coiled in a sleek knot, had risen
suddenly from her place and walked indolently to the edge of the
plashing pink fountain in the center of the room, had stood
contemplating its shallows with a dreamy half-smile on her lips,
Buttered Side Down |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: good in us from head to foot [both within and without], and
that we must absolutely become new and other men.
This repentance is not piecemeal [partial] and beggarly
[fragmentary], like that which does penance for actual sins,
nor is it uncertain like that. For it does not debate what is
or is not sin, but hurls everything on a heap, and says: All
in us is nothing but sin [affirms that, with respect to us,
all is simply sin (and there is nothing in us that is not sin
and guilt)]. What is the use of [For why do we wish]
investigating, dividing, or distinguishing a long time? For
this reason, too, this contrition is not [doubtful or]
|
