| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: delightful fortnight together. In the morning they rode on the
Lido, or glided up and down the green canals in their long black
gondola; in the afternoon they usually entertained visitors on the
yacht; and in the evening they dined at Florian's, and smoked
innumerable cigarettes on the Piazza. Yet somehow Lord Arthur was
not happy. Every day he studied the obituary column in the TIMES,
expecting to see a notice of Lady Clementina's death, but every day
he was disappointed. He began to be afraid that some accident had
happened to her, and often regretted that he had prevented her
taking the aconitine when she had been so anxious to try its
effect. Sybil's letters, too, though full of love, and trust, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: eloquent challenge to the monumental works of science and human
excrescences of knowledge, such as those which societies use the
elements of the earthly globe to produce. He asked whether our wars,
our disasters, our depravity could hinder the great movement given by
God to all the globes; and he laughed human impotence to scorn by
pointing to their efforts everywhere in ruins. He cried upon the manes
of Tyre, Carthage, and Babylon; he called upon Babel and Jerusalem to
appear; and sought, without finding them, the transient furrows made
by the ploughshare of civilization. Humanity floated on the surface of
the earth as a ship whose wake is lost in the calm level of ocean.
These were the fundamental notions set forth in Doctor Sigier's
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: vast and wonderful, Madam How's work is than that of man.
But if you asked the nymph why she worked on for ever, she could
not tell you. For like the Nymphs of old, and the Hamadryads who
lived, in trees, and Undine, and the little Sea-maiden, she would
have no soul; no reason; no power to say why.
It is for you, who are a reasonable being, to guess why: or at
least listen to me if I guess for you, and say, perhaps--I can
only say perhaps--that chalk may be going to make layers of rich
marl in the sea between England and France; and those marl-beds
may be upheaved and grow into dry land, and be ploughed, and
sowed, and reaped by a wiser race of men, in a better-ordered
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