The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: instructor, who valued himself for his skill, and in a little while
I found some employment requisite to beguile the tediousness of
time, which was to be passed always amidst the same objects. I was
weary of looking in the morning on things from which I had turned
away weary in the evening: I therefore was at last willing to
observe the stars rather than do nothing, but could not always
compose my thoughts, and was very often thinking on Nekayah when
others imagined me contemplating the sky. Soon after, the Arab
went upon another expedition, and then my only pleasure was to talk
with my maids about the accident by which we were carried away, and
the happiness we should all enjoy at the end of our captivity."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: Or my affection put to the smallest teen,
Or any of my leisures ever charm'd:
Harm have I done to them, but ne'er was harmed;
Kept hearts in liveries, but mine own was free,
And reign'd, commanding in his monarchy.
'Look here what tributes wounded fancies sent me,
Of paled pearls and rubies red as blood;
Figuring that they their passions likewise lent me
Of grief and blushes, aptly understood
In bloodless white and the encrimson'd mood;
Effects of terror and dear modesty,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: behold. You, who do not even know its situation on the map,
probably denounce sensational descriptions, stretching your limbs
the while in your pleasant parlour on Beretania Street. When I was
pulled ashore there one early morning, there sat with me in the
boat two sisters, bidding farewell (in humble imitation of Damien)
to the lights and joys of human life. One of these wept silently;
I could not withhold myself from joining her. Had you been there,
it is my belief that nature would have triumphed even in you; and
as the boat drew but a little nearer, and you beheld the stairs
crowded with abominable deformations of our common manhood, and saw
yourself landing in the midst of such a population as only now and
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