| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: The transaction had justified itself by its results: she saw now
how absurd it would have been to let any primitive scruple
deprive her of this easy means of appeasing her creditors. Lily
felt really virtuous as she dispensed the sum in sops to her
tradesmen, and the fact that a fresh order accompanied each
payment did not lessen her sense of disinterestedness. How many
women, in her place, would have given the orders without making
the payment!
She had found it reassuringly easy to keep Trenor in a good
humour. To listen to his stories, to receive his confidences and
laugh at his jokes, seemed for the moment all that was required
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: such branches as are esteemed the most curious and rare. I knew the
judgment which others had formed of me; and I did not find that I was
considered inferior to my fellows, although there were among them some who
were already marked out to fill the places of our instructors. And, in
fine, our age appeared to me as flourishing, and as fertile in powerful
minds as any preceding one. I was thus led to take the liberty of judging
of all other men by myself, and of concluding that there was no science in
existence that was of such a nature as I had previously been given to believe.
I still continued, however, to hold in esteem the studies of the schools.
I was aware that the languages taught in them are necessary to the
understanding of the writings of the ancients; that the grace of fable
Reason Discourse |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: had taken new root and were unwilling to return. I believe,
that in spite of the mobilization, the oil-wells are still short of
men. In the coal districts also, which have passed through
similar experiences, the proportion of skilled to unskilled
labor is very much smaller than it was before the war.
There have also been two mobilizations of railway workers,
and these, I think, may be partly responsible for the
undoubted improvement noticeable during the year,
although this is partly at least due to other things beside
conscription. In the first place Trotsky carried with him into
the Commissariat of Transport the same ferocious energy
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