| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: short pause. "A convict is no more in my eyes than an emmet is in
yours. I am like the Italian brigands--fine men they are! If a
traveler is worth ever so little more than the charge of their musket,
they shoot him dead.
"I thought only of you.--I got the young man to make a clean breast of
it; he was bound to trust me, we had been chained together. Theodore
is very good stuff; he thought he was doing his mistress a good turn
by undertaking to sell or pawn stolen goods; but he is no more guilty
of the Nanterre job than you are. He is a Corsican; it is their way to
revenge themselves and kill each other like flies. In Italy and Spain
a man's life is not respected, and the reason is plain. There we are
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: shore, that I have got out as many necessary things as will either
supply my wants or enable me to supply myself, even as long as I
live.
Upon the whole, here was an undoubted testimony that there was
scarce any condition in the world so miserable but there was
something negative or something positive to be thankful for in it;
and let this stand as a direction from the experience of the most
miserable of all conditions in this world: that we may always find
in it something to comfort ourselves from, and to set, in the
description of good and evil, on the credit side of the account.
Having now brought my mind a little to relish my condition, and
Robinson Crusoe |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: himself to letters for his life; by-and-by, when he learns
more gravity, he finds that he has chosen better than he
knew; that if he earns little, he is earning it amply; that
if he receives a small wage, he is in a position to do
considerable services; that it is in his power, in some small
measure, to protect the oppressed and to defend the truth.
So kindly is the world arranged, such great profit may arise
from a small degree of human reliance on oneself, and such,
in particular, is the happy star of this trade of writing,
that it should combine pleasure and profit to both parties,
and be at once agreeable, like fiddling, and useful, like
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