| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: playing a sly trick--if monkeys smile.
"Ah! I have him," thought she; and, indeed, she had him fast.
"But you are--" he said, raising his fine head and looking at her with
eyes of love.
"Virgin and martyr," she replied, smiling at the commonness of that
hackneyed expression, but giving it a freshness of meaning by her
smile, so full of painful gayety. "If I laugh," she continued, "it is
that I am thinking of that princess whom the world thinks it knows,
that Duchesse de Maufrigneuse to whom it gives as lovers de Marsay,
that infamous de Trailles (a political cutthroat), and that little
fool of a d'Esgrignon, and Rastignac, Rubempre, ambassadors,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: d'Euna, who was afterwards cardinal; and he ordered that, as soon as
Vitellozzo, Pagolo Orsini, the Duke di Gravina, and Oliverotto should
arrive, his followers in pairs should take them one by one, entrusting
certain men to certain pairs, who should entertain them until they
reached Sinigalia; nor should they be permitted to leave until they
came to the duke's quarters, where they should be seized.
The duke afterwards ordered all his horsemen and infantry, of which
there were more than two thousand cavalry and ten thousand footmen, to
assemble by daybreak at the Metauro, a river five miles distant from
Fano, and await him there. He found himself, therefore, on the last
day of December at the Metauro with his men, and having sent a
 The Prince |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: know--Howard is two (sic) dirty to be seen out on the street
to-day." Sometimes they go and watch a man who paints "genuine
oil paintings" in a shoe store, which are given away with every
dollar purchase of shoes--"he can paint a picture in one and a
half minutes, ain't that quick!" Howard was getting a little
troublesome. "I don't like to tell you," writes Alice, "but you
ask me, so I will have to. Howard won't mind me at all. He
wanted a book and I got `Life of General Sheridan,' and it is
awful nice, but now he don't read it at all hardly." Poor
Howard! One morning, says Alice, Mr. Holmes told him to
stay in and wait for him, as he was coming to take him out, but
 A Book of Remarkable Criminals |