| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: assent to the treaty and that she wished eternal war.
But when Aramis had presented that peace to her in a true
light -- that is to say, with all its advantages; when he
had pointed out to her, in exchange for the precarious and
contested royalty of Paris, the viceroyalty of
Font-de-l'Arche, in other words, of all Normandy; when he
had rung in her ears the five hundred thousand francs
promised by the cardinal; when he had dazzled her eyes with
the honor bestowed on her by the king in holding her child
at the baptismal font, Madame de Longueville contended no
longer, except as is the custom with pretty women to
Twenty Years After |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: I have thought them over. But, my dear friend, I was right, all the same.
This is the regular way."
"I didn't do what I ought," said Newman. "I ought to have
done something else."
"For instance?"
"Oh, something or other. I ought to have treated you as a small boy."
"Well, I'm a very small boy, now," said Valentin.
"I'm rather less than an infant. An infant is helpless,
but it's generally voted promising. I'm not promising, eh?
Society can't lose a less valuable member."
Newman was strongly moved. He got up and turned his back upon his
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: with patience alone, but with a lovely happiness of temper. He had
belonged all his life to the ancient, formal, speechmaking,
compliment-presenting school of courtesy; the dictates of this code
partook in his eyes of the nature of a duty; and he must now be
courteous for two. Partly from a happy illusion, partly in a
tender fraud, he kept his wife before the world as a still active
partner. When he paid a call, he would have her write 'with love'
upon a card; or if that (at the moment) was too much, he would go
armed with a bouquet and present it in her name. He even wrote
letters for her to copy and sign: an innocent substitution, which
may have caused surprise to Ruffini or to Vernon Lee, if they ever
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