| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: one occasion, when you went to the Olympic games, all that you had on your
person was made by yourself. You began with your ring, which was of your
own workmanship, and you said that you could engrave rings; and you had
another seal which was also of your own workmanship, and a strigil and an
oil flask, which you had made yourself; you said also that you had made the
shoes which you had on your feet, and the cloak and the short tunic; but
what appeared to us all most extraordinary and a proof of singular art, was
the girdle of your tunic, which, you said, was as fine as the most costly
Persian fabric, and of your own weaving; moreover, you told us that you had
brought with you poems, epic, tragic, and dithyrambic, as well as prose
writings of the most various kinds; and you said that your skill was also
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: humorous sort.
"Oh, Mr. Cockman, now! How can you tell such a tale to me in my innocence!"
she cried gaily. "Mr. Cockman, what do you use to make your moustache curl
so beautiful?" As the young man was clean shaven the retort provoked a laugh
at his expense.
"Come!" said he, "I'll have a curacao; and a light, please."
She served the liqueur from one of the lovely bottles and striking a match
held it to his cigarette with ministering archness while he whiffed.
"Well, have you heard from your husband lately, my dear?"
he asked.
"Not a sound," said she.
Jude the Obscure |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: bequeathed his daughter her proper share of his goods, was all that
could be taken for consent.
They were married: John, a grave man in middle age, weather-beaten
and worn by years of hard work and self-denial, yet not beyond the
restoration of a milder second youth; and Phebe a sad, weary woman,
whose warmth of longing had been exhausted, from whom youth and its
uncalculating surrenders of hope and feeling had gone forever.
They began their wedded life under the shadow of the death out of
which it grew; and when, after a ceremony in which neither
bridesmaid nor groomsman stood by their side, they united their
divided homes, it seemed to their neighbors that a separated
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