| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: into debt, and is an absolute nothing; worse than that, he becomes an
idiot! Come, gentlemen, now's the time to make a stand! Let us all
give in our resignations! Fleury, Chazelle, fling yourselves into
other employments and become the great men you really are."
Chazelle [calmed down by Bixiou's allocution]. "No, I thank you"
[general laughter].
Bixiou. "You are wrong; in your situation I should try to get ahead of
the general-secretary."
Chazelle [uneasily]. "What has he to do with me?"
Bixiou. "You'll find out; do you suppose Baudoyer will overlook what
happened just now?"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: the memories of the dumlicide Justice. So long ago, so far
away it was, that I had first evoked the faces and the mutual
tragic situation of the men of Durrisdeer.
My story was now world-wide enough: Scotland, India, and
America being all obligatory scenes. But of these India was
strange to me except in books; I had never known any living
Indian save a Parsee, a member of my club in London, equally
civilised, and (to all seeing) equally accidental with
myself. It was plain, thus far, that I should have to get
into India and out of it again upon a foot of fairy
lightness; and I believe this first suggested to me the idea
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: softly to himself.
"Just fancy, for a minute, the old man's beard
stuck on to my chin. Hey? Now say. I was the
very spit of him from a boy."
"It's true," she murmured to herself.
"And that's about as far as it goes. He was al-
ways one of your domestic characters. Why, I re-
member how he used to go about looking very sick
for three days before he had to leave home on one
of his trips to South Shields for coal. He had a
standing charter from the gas-works. You would
 To-morrow |