| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: his dejection, and partly in approbation of his spirit,
relieved him from his perplexity by paying the damages
privately, and discouraging all animadversion
and reproof.
This indulgence could not wholly preserve him
from the remembrance of his disgrace, nor at once
restore his confidence and elation. He was for three
days silent, modest, and compliant, and thought
himself neither too wise for instruction, nor too
manly for restraint. But his levity overcame this
salutary sorrow; he began to talk with his former
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: according to his mood. More than any one else in history he wakes
in us that temper of wonder to which romance always appeals. There
is still something to me almost incredible in the idea of a young
Galilean peasant imagining that he could bear on his own shoulders
the burden of the entire world; all that had already been done and
suffered, and all that was yet to be done and suffered: the sins
of Nero, of Caesar Borgia, of Alexander VI., and of him who was
Emperor of Rome and Priest of the Sun: the sufferings of those
whose names are legion and whose dwelling is among the tombs:
oppressed nationalities, factory children, thieves, people in
prison, outcasts, those who are dumb under oppression and whose
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: cold, hard floor, of common tiles reddened with encaustic, was not
felt through a soft thick carpet. The furniture consisted of two
pretty chairs and a bed in an alcove, just now half hidden by a table
loaded with the remains of an elegant dinner, while two bottles with
long necks and an empty champagne-bottle in ice strewed the field of
bacchus cultivated by Venus.
There were also--the property, no doubt, of Valerie--a low easy-chair
and a man's smoking-chair, and a pretty toilet chest of drawers in
rosewood, the mirror handsomely framed /a la/ Pompadour. A lamp
hanging from the ceiling gave a subdued light, increased by wax
candles on the table and on the chimney-shelf.
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