| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare: I ha't: when in your motion you are hot and dry,
As make your bowts more violent to the end,
And that he cals for drinke; Ile haue prepar'd him
A Challice for the nonce; whereon but sipping,
If he by chance escape your venom'd stuck,
Our purpose may hold there; how sweet Queene.
Enter Queene.
Queen. One woe doth tread vpon anothers heele,
So fast they'l follow: your Sister's drown'd Laertes
Laer. Drown'd! O where?
Queen. There is a Willow growes aslant a Brooke,
 Hamlet |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne: followed almost instantly by other cries replying from the outside.
Passepartout and the guide stopped. Had they been heard? Was the
alarm being given? Common prudence urged them to retire, and they
did so, followed by Phileas Fogg and Sir Francis. They again hid
themselves in the wood, and waited till the disturbance, whatever
it might be, ceased, holding themselves ready to resume their attempt
without delay. But, awkwardly enough, the guards now appeared
at the rear of the temple, and there installed themselves,
in readiness to prevent a surprise.
It would be difficult to describe the disappointment of the party,
thus interrupted in their work. They could not now reach the victim;
 Around the World in 80 Days |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: while Fleeming's sky was still unclouded, he was reading Smiles.
'I read my engineers' lives steadily,' he writes, 'but find
biographies depressing. I suspect one reason to be that
misfortunes and trials can be graphically described, but happiness
and the causes of happiness either cannot be or are not. A grand
new branch of literature opens to my view: a drama in which people
begin in a poor way and end, after getting gradually happier, in an
ecstasy of enjoyment. The common novel is not the thing at all.
It gives struggle followed by relief. I want each act to close on
a new and triumphant happiness, which has been steadily growing all
the while. This is the real antithesis of tragedy, where things
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