| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: With reference to the military side- the plan of campaign- that work
of genius of which Thiers remarks that, "His genius never devised
anything more profound, more skillful, or more admirable," and
enters into a polemic with M. Fain to prove that this work of genius
must be referred not to the fourth but to the fifteenth of October-
that plan never was or could be executed, for it was quite out of
touch with the facts of the case. The fortifying of the Kremlin, for
which la Mosquee (as Napoleon termed the church of Basil the
Beatified) was to have been razed to the ground, proved quite useless.
The mining of the Kremlin only helped toward fulfilling Napoleon's
wish that it should be blown up when he left Moscow- as a child
War and Peace |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: sufficiently facetious grimace passed over the features of the
late Duke.
The taste of the Spanish people for ecclesiastical solemnities is
so well known, that it should not be difficult to imagine the
religious pantomime by which the Convent of San-Lucar celebrated
the translation of the blessed Don Juan Belvidero to the abbey-
church. The tale of the partial resurrection had spread so
quickly from village to village, that a day or two after the
death of the illustrious nobleman the report had reached every
place within fifty miles of San-Lucar, and it was as good as a
play to see the roads covered already with crowds flocking in on
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: of desperation. I just took it into my own hands and went
away from him, boiling, and--But what's the use telling you?
YOU know! . . . Do you think that if I had not been pretty fierce
with them I should have got the men to do anything? Not It!
The bo's'n perhaps? Perhaps! It wasn't a heavy sea--it was a sea
gone mad! I suppose the end of the world will be something like that;
and a man may have the heart to see it coming once and be done with it--
but to have to face it day after day--I don't blame anybody.
I was precious little better than the rest. Only--I was an officer
of that old coal wagon, anyhow--"
"I quite understand," I conveyed that sincere assurance into his ear.
The Secret Sharer |
