| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: old persuasion, and there had evidently been a function - perhaps a
service for the dead; the high altar was still a blaze of candles.
This was an exhibition he always liked, and he dropped into a seat
with relief. More than it had ever yet come home to him it struck
him as good there should be churches.
This one was almost empty and the other altars were dim; a verger
shuffled about, an old woman coughed, but it seemed to Stransom
there was hospitality in the thick sweet air. Was it only the
savour of the incense or was it something of larger intention? He
had at any rate quitted the great grey suburb and come nearer to
the warm centre. He presently ceased to feel intrusive, gaining at
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: superior to that of a man of whom it is simply stated that "he is
witty." Genius always presupposes moral insight. This insight may
be applied to a special subject; but he who can see a flower must
be able to see the sun. The man who on hearing a diplomate he has
saved ask, "How is the Emperor?" could say, "The courtier is
alive; the man will follow!"--that man is not merely a surgeon or
a physician, he is prodigiously witty also. Hence a patient and
diligent student of human nature will admit Desplein's exorbitant
pretensions, and believe--as he himself believed--that he might
have been no less great as a minister than he was as a surgeon.
Among the riddles which Desplein's life presents to many of his
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: 'Thus I forestall thee, if thou mean to chide:
Thy beauty hath ensnared thee to this night,
Where thou with patience must my will abide,
My will that marks thee for my earth's delight,
Which I to conquer sought with all my might;
But as reproof and reason beat it dead,
By thy bright beauty was it newly bred.
'I see what crosses my attempt will bring;
I know what thorns the growing rose defends;
I think the honey guarded with a sting;
All this, beforehand, counsel comprehends:
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