| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: retreat from happiness when it comes with a rush, and accept
misfortune if it presents itself mildly with gentle shadows. Paul
therefore committed himself in his own mind all the more because he
saw no effort on Madame Evangelista's part to bind him. She fairly
seduced him one evening by remarking that to superior women as well as
men there came a period of life when ambition superseded all the
earlier emotions of life.
"That woman is fitted," thought Paul, as he left her, "to advance me
in diplomacy before I am even made a deputy."
If, in all the circumstances of life a man does not turn over and over
both things and ideas in order to examine them thoroughly under their
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: I did not use to think her wanting in self-possession,
but she had not quite enough for the demands of yesterday.
Upon the whole, Julia was in the best looks of the two,
at least after you were spoken of. There was no
recovering the complexion from the moment that I spoke
of 'Fanny,' and spoke of her as a sister should.
But Mrs. Rushworth's day of good looks will come;
we have cards for her first party on the 28th. Then she
will be in beauty, for she will open one of the best
houses in Wimpole Street. I was in it two years ago,
when it was Lady Lascelle's, and prefer it to almost
Mansfield Park |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: raised the latch, he looked up to the inscription above, and said,
with a stupid mixture of awkwardness and elation: "Miss Catherine!
I can read yon, now."
'"Wonderful," I exclaimed. "Pray let us hear you - you ARE grown
clever!"
'He spelt, and drawled over by syllables, the name - "Hareton
Earnshaw."
'"And the figures?" I cried, encouragingly, perceiving that he came
to a dead halt.
'"I cannot tell them yet," he answered.
'"Oh, you dunce!" I said, laughing heartily at his failure.
Wuthering Heights |
