| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: is really her own mother. She used to be a concierge, but she's not
without intelligence. Call her Madame; she makes a point of it."
Florentine happened that night to have a friend with her,--a certain
Marie Godeschal, beautiful as an angel, cold as a danseuse, and a
pupil of Vestris, who foretold for her a great choregraphic destiny.
Mademoiselle Godeschal, anxious to make her first appearance at the
Panorama-Dramatique under the name of Mariette, based her hopes on the
protection and influence of a first gentleman of the bedchamber, to
whom Vestris had promised to introduce her. Vestris, still green
himself at this period, did not think his pupil sufficiently trained
to risk the introduction. The ambitious girl did, in the end, make her
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: a final effort of escape from his wife's inexpressive acceptance
of his shame. It seemed to him that as long as he could keep
himself alive to that shame he would not wholly have succumbed to
its consequences. His chief fear was that he should become the
creature of his act. His wife's indifference degraded him; it
seemed to put him on a level with his dishonor. Margaret Aubyn
would have abhorred the deed in proportion to her pity for the
man. The sense of her potential pity drew him back to her. The
one woman knew but did not understand; the other, it sometimes
seemed, understood without knowing.
In its last disguise of retrospective remorse, his self-pity
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: arch, of the most exquisite workmanship, when compared with this
living memento of the fragility, the instability, of reason, and
the wild luxuriancy of noxious passions? Enthusiasm turned adrift,
like some rich stream overflowing its banks, rushes forward with
destructive velocity, inspiring a sublime concentration of thought.
Thus thought Maria--These are the ravages over which humanity must
ever mournfully ponder, with a degree of anguish not excited by
crumbling marble, or cankering brass, unfaithful to the trust of
monumental fame. It is not over the decaying productions of the
mind, embodied with the happiest art, we grieve most bitterly.
The view of what has been done by man, produces a melancholy, yet
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