| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: there was a bailiff in gaiters discussing the state of the cattle
market with a dissenting minister--so she defined them.
She ran over this list without any fear that her companion would think
her trivial. Indeed, whether it was due to the warmth of the room or
to the good roast beef, or whether Ralph had achieved the process
which is called making up one's mind, certainly he had given up
testing the good sense, the independent character, the intelligence
shown in her remarks. He had been building one of those piles of
thought, as ramshackle and fantastic as a Chinese pagoda, half from
words let fall by gentlemen in gaiters, half from the litter in his
own mind, about duck shooting and legal history, about the Roman
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: prophetic bosh in blunt type on this filthy paper eh? Why don't
you do something? Look here. I've this matter in hand now, and I
tell you plainly that you will have to earn your money. The good
old Stott-Wartenheim times are over. No work, no pay."
Mr Verloc felt a queer sensation of faintness in his stout legs.
He stepped back one pace, and blew his nose loudly.
He was, in truth, startled and alarmed. The rusty London sunshine
struggling clear of the London mist shed a lukewarm brightness into
the First Secretary's private room; and in the silence Mr Verloc
heard against a window-pane the faint buzzing of a fly - his first
fly of the year - heralding better than any number of swallows the
The Secret Agent |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: but they did not all succeed. Five or six only were compleated,
which were called by different names, as the Vine, the Union,
the Band, etc. They were useful to themselves, and afforded us a good
deal of amusement, information, and instruction, besides answering,
in some considerable degree, our views of influencing the public
opinion on particular occasions, of which I shall give some instances
in course of time as they happened.
My first promotion was my being chosen, in 1736, clerk of the
General Assembly. The choice was made that year without opposition;
but the year following, when I was again propos'd (the choice,
like that of the members, being annual), a new member made a long
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
