The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle: side, and yet I question whether Mr. Lestrade would have noted
even so self-evident a thing as that."
"How on earth--"
"My dear fellow, I know you well. I know the military neatness
which characterizes you. You shave every morning, and in this
season you shave by the sunlight; but since your shaving is less
and less complete as we get farther back on the left side, until
it becomes positively slovenly as we get round the angle of the
jaw, it is surely very clear that that side is less illuminated
than the other. I could not imagine a man of your habits looking
at himself in an equal light and being satisfied with such a
 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: by Inda her eunuch, whom St. Philip baptised, prevailed with her
subjects to quit the worship of idols, and profess the faith of
Jesus Christ. This opinion appears to me without any better
foundation than another of the conversion of the Abyssins to the
Jewish rites by the Queen of Sheba, at her return from the court of
Solomon. They, however, who patronise these traditions give us very
specious accounts of the zeal and piety of the Abyssins at their
first conversion. Many, they say, abandoned all the pleasures and
vanities of life for solitude and religious austerities; others
devoted themselves to God in an ecclesiastical life; they who could
not do these set apart their revenues for building churches,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: as brave as might be.
It was a time of blithe and unmixed happiness for the friends. Lucien
was tired of the shabbiness of provincial life, and weary of the
sordid frugality that looked on a five-franc piece as a fortune, but
he bore the hardships and the pinching thrift without grumbling. His
moody looks had been succeeded by an expression of radiant hope. He
saw the star shining above his head, he had dreams of a great time to
come, and built the fabric of his good fortune on M. de Bargeton's
tomb. M. de Bargeton, troubled with indigestion from time to time,
cherished the happy delusion that indigestion after dinner was a
complaint to be cured by a hearty supper.
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