| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: the trees, which blew the wires and made the lights go off and on again
as if the house had winked into the darkness. As my taxi groaned away I
saw Gatsby walking toward me across his lawn.
"Your place looks like the World's Fair," I said.
"Does it?" He turned his eyes toward it absently. "I have been glancing
into some of the rooms. Let's go to Coney Island, old sport. In my car."
"It's too late."
"Well, suppose we take a plunge in the swimming-pool? I haven't made use
of it all summer."
"I've got to go to bed."
"All right."
The Great Gatsby |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: private pleasures, the rest of his fortune he but holds and
disposes under trust for mankind; it is not his, because he
has not earned it; it cannot be his, because his services
have already been paid; but year by year it is his to
distribute, whether to help individuals whose birthright and
outfit have been swallowed up in his, or to further public
works and institutions.
At this rate, short of inspiration, it seems hardly possible
to be both rich and honest; and the millionaire is under a
far more continuous temptation to thieve than the labourer
who gets his shilling daily for despicable toils. Are you
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: guardians. Concerning the country the Egyptian priests said what is not
only probable but manifestly true, that the boundaries were in those days
fixed by the Isthmus, and that in the direction of the continent they
extended as far as the heights of Cithaeron and Parnes; the boundary line
came down in the direction of the sea, having the district of Oropus on the
right, and with the river Asopus as the limit on the left. The land was
the best in the world, and was therefore able in those days to support a
vast army, raised from the surrounding people. Even the remnant of Attica
which now exists may compare with any region in the world for the variety
and excellence of its fruits and the suitableness of its pastures to every
sort of animal, which proves what I am saying; but in those days the
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