| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: the tavern, the house with the iron-roofed barn, and my heir,'
thought he. 'How can I leave all that? What does this mean?
It cannot be!' These thoughts flashed through his mind. Then
he thought of the wormwood tossed by the wind, which he had
twice ridden past, and he was seized with such terror that he
did not believe in the reality of what was happening to him.
'Can this be a dream?' he thought, and tried to wake up but
could not. It was real snow that lashed his face and covered
him and chilled his right hand from which he had lost the
glove, and this was a real desert in which he was now left
alone like that wormwood, awaiting an inevitable, speedy, and
Master and Man |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: Villefort relieved all Dantes' apprehensions; he advanced
calmly, and placed himself in the centre of the escort. A
carriage waited at the door, the coachman was on the box,
and a police officer sat beside him.
"Is this carriage for me?" said Dantes.
"It is for you," replied a gendarme.
Dantes was about to speak; but feeling himself urged
forward, and having neither the power nor the intention to
resist, he mounted the steps, and was in an instant seated
inside between two gendarmes; the two others took their
places opposite, and the carriage rolled heavily over the
The Count of Monte Cristo |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: hate such skies. Daylight is friendly to man toiling under a sun
which warms his heart; and cloudy soft nights are more kindly to our
littleness. I nearly ran back again to my lighted parlour; Fyne
fussing in a knicker-bocker suit before the hosts of heaven, on a
shadowy earth, about a transient, phantom-like girl, seemed too
ridiculous to associate with. On the other hand there was something
fascinating in the very absurdity. He cut along in his best
pedestrian style and I found myself let in for a spell of severe
exercise at eleven o'clock at night.
In the distance over the fields and trees smudging and blotching the
vast obscurity, one lighted window of the cottage with the blind up
Chance |
