| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: and her cousin Edmund together, would have made her (as
she felt) incapable of judging impartially whether
the concluding offer might be accepted or not.
To herself, individually, it was most tempting. To be
finding herself, perhaps within three days, transported
to Mansfield, was an image of the greatest felicity,
but it would have been a material drawback to be owing
such felicity to persons in whose feelings and conduct,
at the present moment, she saw so much to condemn:
the sister's feelings, the brother's conduct,
_her_ cold-hearted ambition, _his_ thoughtless vanity.
Mansfield Park |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: from this terrible situation by appointing commissioners to examine
the claims, and ordering payment. They amounted to near twenty
thousand pound, which to pay would have ruined me.
Before we had the news of this defeat, the two Doctors Bond came
to me with a subscription paper for raising money to defray
the expense of a grand firework, which it was intended to exhibit
at a rejoicing on receipt of the news of our taking Fort Duquesne.
I looked grave, and said it would, I thought, be time enough
to prepare for the rejoicing when we knew we should have occasion
to rejoice. They seem'd surpris'd that I did not immediately
comply with their proposal. "Why the d--l!" says one of them,
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: determine for him. It would send him straight about to the window
he had left open, and by that window, be long ladder and dangling
rope as absent as they would, he saw himself uncontrollably
insanely fatally take his way to the street. The hideous chance of
this he at least could avert; but he could only avert it by
recoiling in time from assurance. He had the whole house to deal
with, this fact was still there; only he now knew that uncertainty
alone could start him. He stole back from where he had checked
himself - merely to do so was suddenly like safety - and, making
blindly for the greater staircase, left gaping rooms and sounding
passages behind. Here was the top of the stairs, with a fine large
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