| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: property, where will be our security? It will rest solely on the
respect you inspire, and the consideration in which you are held.
Business is not conducted on sentiment. If you had paid two hundred
thousand francs, supposing that there were another one hundred
thousand paid down in advance for possession of the land, we should
then have had the security of a hundred thousand francs, to warrant us
in giving you a credit of one hundred thousand. The result might be to
make us owners of your share by our paying for it, instead of your
doing so; consequently we must be satisfied that the affair is a sound
one. To wait five years to double our capital won't do for us; it is
better to employ it in other ways. There are so many chances! You are
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: From beyond the low hills across the water came the dull
resonance of distant guns and a remote weird crying. Then
everything was still. A cockchafer came droning over the
hedge and past us. High in the west the crescent moon hung
faint and pale above the smoke of Weybridge and Shepper-
ton and the hot, still splendour of the sunset.
"We had better follow this path," I said, "northward."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IN LONDON
My younger brother was in London when the Martians
fell at Woking. He was a medical student working for an
War of the Worlds |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John of Damascus: thereof, and cast it from me, then was there revealed unto me the
true good, to fear God and do his will; for this I saw to be the
sum of all good. This also is called the beginning of wisdom,
and perfect wisdom. For life is without pain and reproach to
those that hold by her, and safe to those who lean upon her as
upon the Lord. So, when I had set my reason on the unerring way
of the commandments of the Lord, and had surely learned that
there is nothing froward or perverse therein, and that it is not
full of chasms and rocks, nor of thorns and thistles, but lieth
altogether smooth and even, rejoicing the eyes of the traveller
with the brightest sights, making beautiful his feet, and shoeing
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