| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: through the house, made, as it were, a great many stations.
She sat down everywhere, confessed to being a little tired, and asked about
the various objects with a curious mixture of alertness and inattention.
If there had been any one to say it to she would have declared that
she was positively in love with her host; but she could hardly make
this declaration--even in the strictest confidence--to Acton himself.
It gave her, nevertheless, a pleasure that had some of the charm of
unwontedness to feel, with that admirable keenness with which she was
capable of feeling things, that he had a disposition without any edges;
that even his humorous irony always expanded toward the point.
One's impression of his honesty was almost like carrying a bunch
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: and with his nose in the pillow, a prod on the shoulder.
Petritsky jumped up suddenly onto his knees and looked round.
"Your brother's been here," he said to Vronsky. "He waked me up,
damn him, and said he'd look in again." And pulling up the rug
he flung himself back on the pillow. "Oh, do shut up, Yashvin!"
he said, getting furious with Yashvin, who was pulling the rug
off him. "Shut up!" He turned over and opened his eyes. "You'd
better tell me what to drink; such a nasty taste in my mouth,
that..."
"Brandy's better than anything," boomed Yashvin. "Tereshtchenko!
brandy for your master and cucumbers," he shouted, obviously
Anna Karenina |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: seen or heard it when first expressed by me, and as it is well
known that different persons may independently utter the same idea,
- as is evinced by that familiar line from Donatus, -
"Pereant illi qui ante nos nostra dixerunt," -
now, therefore, I do request by this instrument that all well-
disposed persons will abstain from asserting or implying that I am
open to any accusation whatsoever touching the said comparison,
and, if they have so asserted or implied, that they will have the
manliness forthwith to retract the same assertion or insinuation.
I think few persons have a greater disgust for plagiarism than
myself. If I had even suspected that the idea in question was
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
