| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: himself first with the doctrines necessary to begin with, for a man in
opposition, but an incubus later to the statesman.
Marcas had learned everything that a real statesman should know;
indeed, his amazement was considerable when he had occasion to discern
the utter ignorance of men who have risen to the administration of
public affairs in France. Though in him it was vocation that had led
to study, nature had been generous and bestowed all that cannot be
acquired--keen perceptions, self-command, a nimble wit, rapid
judgment, decisiveness, and, what is the genius of these men,
fertility in resource.
By the time when Marcas thought himself duly equipped, France was torn
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: is entertaining the plenipotentiary of a sovereign power in treaty
with his own king, and the captain of a German corvette orders him
to quit his guests.
But there was worse to come. I gather that Tamasese was at the
time in the sulks. He had doubtless been promised prompt aid and a
prompt success; he had seen himself surreptitiously helped,
privately ordered about, and publicly disowned; and he was still
the king of nothing more than his own province, and already the
second in command of Captain Brandeis. With the adhesion of some
part of his native cabinet, and behind the back of his white
minister, he found means to communicate with the Hawaiians. A
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: him -- by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat,
followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies
seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of
his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well
defined lines of ramification and to beat with an
inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of
pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As
to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of
fullness -- of congestion. These sensations were
unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his
nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
