| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Cavalry General by Xenophon: for giving them effect the officer will need perpetually to act as
circumstances require.[1] He must take in the situation at a glance,
and carry out unflinchingly whatever is expedient for the moment. To
set down in writing everything that he must do, is not a whit more
possible than to know the future as a whole.[2] But of all hints and
suggestions the most important to my mind is this: whatever you
determine to be right, with diligence endeavour to perform. For be it
tillage of the soil, or trading, or seafaring, or the art of ruling,
without pains applied to bring the matter to perfection, the best
theories in the world, the most correct conclusions, will be
fruitless.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: received in the war with Austria; he was said to be an honorable
man, as well as a brave officer.
The captain, a short, red-faced man, who was tightly girthed in
at the waist, had his red hair cropped quite close to his head,
and in certain lights almost looked as if he had been rubbed over
with phosphorus. He had lost two front teeth one night, though he
could not quite remember how. This defect made him speak so that
he could not always be understood, and he had a bald patch on the
top of his head, which made him look rather like a monk, with a
fringe of curly, bright, golden hair round the circle of bare
skin.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare: Yet to be neutrall to him were dishonour;
Rebellious to oppose: therefore we must
With him stand to the mercy of our Fate,
Who hath bounded our last minute.
ARCITE.
So we must.
Ist sed this warres a foote? or it shall be,
On faile of some condition?
VALERIUS.
Tis in motion
The intelligence of state came in the instant
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