| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane: large dignity as he said it.
Some of the men muttered and looked at the
youth in awe-struck ways. It was plain that as
he had gone on loading and firing and cursing
without the proper intermission, they had found
time to regard him. And they now looked upon
him as a war devil.
The friend came staggering to him. There
was some fright and dismay in his voice. "Are yeh
all right, Fleming? Do yeh feel all right? There
ain't nothin' th' matter with yeh, Henry, is there?"
 The Red Badge of Courage |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: with me. I have eyes, ears, and a pair of feet of my own, to say
nothing of an understanding mind. I will take these out of the
house with me, for I see mischief overhanging you, from which
not one of you men who are insulting people and plotting ill
deeds in the house of Ulysses will be able to escape."
He left the house as he spoke, and went back to Piraeus who gave
him welcome, but the suitors kept looking at one another and
provoking Telemachus by laughing at the strangers. One insolent
fellow said to him, "Telemachus, you are not happy in your
guests; first you have this importunate tramp, who comes begging
bread and wine and has no skill for work or for hard fighting,
 The Odyssey |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: black. Here and there, high up, a bit of stuccoed wall illumined by
the sun glistened with intolerable whiteness. Pipes, rags, shells,
broken and discarded tubs: every one flung whatever was useless to him
into the street, thus affording the passer-by an opportunity of
exercising all his five senses with the rubbish. A man on horseback
could almost touch with his hand the poles thrown across the street
from one house to another, upon which hung Jewish stockings, short
trousers, and smoked geese. Sometimes a pretty little Hebrew face,
adorned with discoloured pearls, peeped out of an old window. A group
of little Jews, with torn and dirty garments and curly hair, screamed
and rolled about in the dirt. A red-haired Jew, with freckles all over
 Taras Bulba and Other Tales |