| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: "Ah! you don't understand. Yes, she's clever, open-minded,
popular, and - well, charming. But you don't know what it is to
have moved, breathed, existed, and even triumphed in the mere
smother and froth of life - the brilliant froth. There thoughts,
sentiments, opinions, feelings, actions too, are nothing but
agitation in empty space - to amuse life - a sort of superior
debauchery, exciting and fatiguing, meaning nothing, leading
nowhere. She is the creature of that circle. And I ask myself if
she is obeying the uneasiness of an instinct seeking its
satisfaction, or is it a revulsion of feeling, or is she merely
deceiving her own heart by this dangerous trifling with romantic
Within the Tides |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: and said: "Excuse me, comrade, but your Polytechnique does send such
young officers--"
"The Chouans have younger ones," said the youth, laughing.
"For whom did you take my son?" asked Madame du Gua.
"For the Gars, the leader sent to the Chouans and the Vendeans by the
British cabinet; his real name is Marquis de Montauran."
The commandant watched the faces of the suspected pair, who looked at
each other with a puzzled expression that seemed to say: "Do you know
that name?" "No, do you?" "What is he talking about?" "He's dreaming."
The sudden change in the manner of Marie de Verneuil, and her torpor
as she heard the name of the royalist general was observed by no one
The Chouans |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: and sat down with it in her lap. There, for a quarter of an hour,
she read the history of the loves of the Prince Camaralzaman
and the Princess Badoura. At last, looking up, she beheld,
as it seemed to her, the Prince Camaralzaman standing before her.
A beautiful young man was making her a very low bow--a magnificent bow,
such as she had never seen before. He appeared to have dropped
from the clouds; he was wonderfully handsome; he smiled--
smiled as if he were smiling on purpose. Extreme surprise,
for a moment, kept Gertrude sitting still; then she rose,
without even keeping her finger in her book. The young man,
with his hat in his hand, still looked at her, smiling and smiling.
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