| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: with a piece of money. The SMEATON had been named
spontaneously, from a sense of the obligation which a public
work of the description of the Bell Rock owed to the labours
and abilities of Mr. Smeaton. The writer certainly never
could have anticipated the satisfaction which he this day felt
in witnessing the pleasure it afforded to the only
representative of this great man's family.
[Friday, 20th July]
The gale from the N.E. still continued so strong,
accompanied with a heavy sea, that the PATRIOT could not
approach her moorings; and although the tender still kept her
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: Bates had been sent for at that time of the evening. She went into
the house; I stayed behind a few minutes to plant in my garden a
handful of roots I had dug up in the forest, and which I feared
would wither if I left them till the morning. This done, I lingered
yet a little longer: the flowers smelt so sweet as the dew fell; it
was such a pleasant evening, so serene, so warm; the still glowing
west promised so fairly another fine day on the morrow; the moon
rose with such majesty in the grave east. I was noting these things
and enjoying them as a child might, when it entered my mind as it
had never done before:-
"How sad to be lying now on a sick bed, and to be in danger of
Jane Eyre |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: know a ring?
ALCIBIADES: That is true.
SOCRATES: And can we ever know what art makes a man better, if we do not
know what we are ourselves?
ALCIBIADES: Impossible.
SOCRATES: And is self-knowledge such an easy thing, and was he to be
lightly esteemed who inscribed the text on the temple at Delphi? Or is
self-knowledge a difficult thing, which few are able to attain?
ALCIBIADES: At times I fancy, Socrates, that anybody can know himself; at
other times the task appears to be very difficult.
SOCRATES: But whether easy or difficult, Alcibiades, still there is no
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