| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll: 'I cannot manage it to-day.'
And now the April showers were dry--
The five short weeks were nearly spent--
Yet still he got the old reply,
'It is not quite convenient!'
The Fourth arrived, and punctual Paul
Came, with his legal friend, at noon.
'I thought it best,' said he, 'to call:
One cannot settle things too soon.'
Poor Peter shuddered in despair:
His flowing locks he wildly tore:
 Sylvie and Bruno |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: on the borderland between faith and rationalism, one likes to note
even the most minute instances of the rise of the critical and
sceptical spirit of inquiry.
How really strange, at base, it was with him may, I think, be shown
by a reference to those passages where he applies rationalistic
tests to matters connected with religion. He nowhere, indeed,
grapples with the moral and scientific difficulties of the Greek
Bible; and where he rejects as incredible the marvellous
achievements of Hercules in Egypt, he does so on the express
grounds that he had not yet been received among the gods, and so
was still subject to the ordinary conditions of mortal life ([Greek
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: and Arment said slowly: "Will you come this way?"
He followed her into the drawing-room and closed the door.
Julia, as she advanced, was vaguely aware that the room at least
was unchanged: time had not mitigated its horrors. The contadina
still lurched from the chimney-breast, and the Greek slave
obstructed the threshold of the inner room. The place was alive
with memories: they started out from every fold of the yellow
satin curtains and glided between the angles of the rosewood
furniture. But while some subordinate agency was carrying these
impressions to her brain, her whole conscious effort was centred
in the act of dominating Arment's will. The fear that he would
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