| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: of the mansion, seemed, from the moment of his arrival, to assume
and exercise a predominant and unaccountable influence in the
management of his private affairs.
Mr. Ratcliffe was a grave, steady, reserved man, in an advanced
period of life. To those with whom he had occasion to speak upon
business, he appeared uncommonly well versed in all its forms.
With others he held little communication; but in any casual
intercourse, or conversation, displayed the powers of an active
and well-informed mind. For some time before taking up his final
residence at the castle, he had been an occasional visitor there,
and was at such times treated by Mr. Vere (contrary to his
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap
of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more
afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was
threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak
of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who "didn't know what fear was,"
we ought always to add the flea--and put him at the head of the procession.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Judge Driscoll was in bed and asleep by ten o'clock on Friday night,
and he was up and gone a-fishing before daylight in the morning with
his friend Pembroke Howard. These two had been boys together in
Virginia when that state still ranked as the chief and most imposing
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from 1984 by George Orwell: the worn face nearer.
'You are thinking,' he said, 'that my face is old and tired. You are
thinking that I talk of power, and yet I am not even able to prevent the
decay of my own body. Can you not understand, Winston, that the individual
is only a cell? The weariness of the cell is the vigour of the organism.
Do you die when you cut your fingernails?'
He turned away from the bed and began strolling up and down again, one hand
in his pocket.
'We are the priests of power,' he said. 'God is power. But at present
power is only a word so far as you are concerned. It is time for you to
gather some idea of what power means. The first thing you must realize
1984 |
