| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: saw no one and heard no sound. At night he
strained his eyes. It was dark--he heard a rustling
noise once, but he was certain that no one could
have come near the pump. It was to the left of his
deck port, and he could not have failed to see a
man, for the night was clear and starry. He saw
nothing; towards morning another faint noise
made him suspicious. Deliberately and quietly he
unlocked his door. He had not slept, and had not
given way to the horror of the situation. He
wanted to live.
Falk |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: returned to their native homes, and who of evenings tell marvelous
tales about his adventures and his armies for the benefit of these
simple folk. Their coming back is, moreover, a puzzle that no one can
explain. Before I came here, the young men who went into the army all
stayed in it for good. This fact in itself is a sufficient revelation
of the wretched condition of the country. I need not give you a
detailed description of it.
"This, then, was the state of things when I first came to the canton,
which has several contented, well-tilled, and fairly prosperous
communes belonging to it upon the other side of the mountains. I will
say nothing about the hovels in the town; they were neither more nor
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: lived and made themselves a government, which I ought briefly to
commemorate. For government is the nurture of man, and the government of
good men is good, and of bad men bad. And I must show that our ancestors
were trained under a good government, and for this reason they were good,
and our contemporaries are also good, among whom our departed friends are
to be reckoned. Then as now, and indeed always, from that time to this,
speaking generally, our government was an aristocracy--a form of government
which receives various names, according to the fancies of men, and is
sometimes called democracy, but is really an aristocracy or government of
the best which has the approval of the many. For kings we have always had,
first hereditary and then elected, and authority is mostly in the hands of
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