| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: opportunity.
Was not this preamble necessary to make you know the charm of the
narrative, by which a celebrated man, now dead, depicted the innocent
jesuistry of women, painting it with the subtlety peculiar to persons
who have seen much of the world, and which makes statesmen such
delightful storytellers when, like Prince Talleyrand and Prince
Metternich, they vouchsafe to tell a story?
De Marsay, prime minister for some six months, had already given
proofs of superior capabilities. Those who had known him long were not
indeed surprised to see him display all the talents and various
aptitudes of a statesman; still it might yet be a question whether he
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: `The manager sends me--' he began in an official tone, and stopped short.
`Good God!' he said, glaring at the wounded man.
"We two whites stood over him, and his lustrous and inquiring
glance enveloped us both. I declare it looked as though he would
presently put to us some questions in an understandable language;
but he died without uttering a sound, without moving a limb,
without twitching a muscle. Only in the very last moment, as though
in response to some sign we could not see, to some whisper we could
not hear, he frowned heavily, and that frown gave to his black
death-mask an inconeivably sombre, brooding, and menacing expression.
The lustre of inquiring glance faded swiftly into vacant glassiness.
Heart of Darkness |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: successful. The incongruous mass of castaways was kept in peace,
and at last shipped in peace out of the islands.
Kane returned to Apia on the 19th, to find the CALLIOPE the sole
survivor of thirteen sail. He thanked his men, and in particular
the engineers, in a speech of unusual feeling and beauty, of which
one who was present remarked to another, as they left the ship,
"This has been a means of grace." Nor did he forget to thank and
compliment the admiral; and I cannot deny myself the pleasure of
transcribing from Kimberley's reply some generous and engaging
words. "My dear captain," he wrote, "your kind note received. You
went out splendidly, and we all felt from our hearts for you, and
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