| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: way, please tell me so frankly; I count on your good faith."
"No, stay with me," she said; "I shall be all alone if you go.
Nucingen is dining in town, and I do not want to be alone; I want
to be taken out of myself."
"But what is the matter?"
"You are the very last person whom I should tell," she exclaimed.
"Then I am connected in some way in this secret. I wonder what it
is?"
"Perhaps. Yet, no," she went on; "it is a domestic quarrel, which
ought to be buried in the depths of the heart. I am very unhappy;
did I not tell you so the day before yesterday? Golden chains are
Father Goriot |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: shooting-box, where I should fish a real trout-stream, and I
believe preserved. I did, too, and it was a charming stream, clear
as crystal, without a trace of peat - a strange thing in Scotland -
and alive with trout; the name of it I cannot remember, it was
something like the Queen's River, and in some hazy way connected
with memories of Mary Queen of Scots. It formed an epoch in my
life, being the end of all my trout-fishing. I had always been
accustomed to pause and very laboriously to kill every fish as I
took it. But in the Queen's River I took so good a basket that I
forgot these niceties; and when I sat down, in a hard rain shower,
under a bank, to take my sandwiches and sherry, lo! and behold,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: dinner a man who has spent his life in educating himself - a rare
type in our time, I admit, but still one occasionally to be met
with - you rise from table richer, and conscious that a high ideal
has for a moment touched and sanctified your days. But oh! my dear
Ernest, to sit next to a man who has spent his life in trying to
educate others! What a dreadful experience that is! How appalling
is that ignorance which is the inevitable result of the fatal habit
of imparting opinions! How limited in range the creature's mind
proves to be! How it wearies us, and must weary himself, with its
endless repetitions and sickly reiteration! How lacking it is in
any element of intellectual growth! In what a vicious circle it
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