| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: that a young man can carry about with him at the beginning of his
career, is an unrequited attachment. It makes him feel important
and business-like, and blase, and cynical; and whenever he has a
touch of liver, or suffers from want of exercise, he can mourn over
his lost love, and be very happy in a tender, twilight fashion.
Hannasyde's affair of the heart had been a Godsend to him. It was
four years old, and the girl had long since given up thinking of it.
She had married and had many cares of her own. In the beginning,
she had told Hannasyde that, "while she could never be anything more
than a sister to him, she would always take the deepest interest in
his welfare." This startlingly new and original remark gave
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: facts that war depends on the rousing of all the murderous
blackguardism still latent in mankind; that every victory means a
defeat; that fatigue, hunger, terror, and disease are the raw material
which romancers work up into military glory; and that soldiers for the
most part go to war as children go to school, because they are afraid
not to. They are afraid even to say they are afraid, as such candor
is punishable by death in the military code.
A very little realistic imagination gives an ambitious person enormous
power over the multitudinous victims of the romantic imagination. For
the romancer not only pleases himself with fictitious glories: he
also terrifies himself with imaginary dangers. He does not even
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso: Forgetting weakness, weariness and thirst.
CX
So she, that thought to rest her weary sprite,
And quench the endless thirst of ardent love
With dear embracements of her lord and knight,
But such as marriage rites should first approve,
When she beheld her foe, with weapon bright
Threatening her death, his trusty courser move,
Her love, her lord, herself abandoned,
She spurred her speedy steed, and swift she fled.
CXI
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