| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: "Thank you," said my cousin, and moved a little away from me.
She began to talk about friendship, and lost her thread and forgot
the little electric stress between us in a rather meandering
analysis of her principal girl friends.
But afterwards she resumed her purpose.
I went to bed that night with one propostion overshadowing
everything else in my mind, namely, that kissing my cousin Sybil was
a difficult, but not impossible, achievement. I do not recall any
shadow of a doubt whether on the whole it was worth doing. The
thing had come into my existence, disturbing and interrupting its
flow exactly as a fever does. Sybil had infected me with herself.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: "Oh! no-- it is not for ME to be driven away by Mr. Darcy. If
HE wishes to avoid seeing ME, he must go. We are not on
friendly terms, and it always gives me pain to meet him, but I
have no reason for avoiding HIM but what I might proclaim
before all the world, a sense of very great ill-usage, and most
painful regrets at his being what he is. His father, Miss Bennet,
the late Mr. Darcy, was one of the best men that ever breathed,
and the truest friend I ever had; and I can never be in company
with this Mr. Darcy without being grieved to the soul by a
thousand tender recollections. His behaviour to myself has been
scandalous; but I verily believe I could forgive him anything and
Pride and Prejudice |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: choice in books. These should all strike a high note, whether
brave or tender, and smack of the open air. The noble and simple
presentation of things noble and simple, that was the 'nitrogenous
food' of which he spoke so much, which he sought so eagerly,
enjoyed so royally. He wrote to an author, the first part of whose
story he had seen with sympathy, hoping that it might continue in
the same vein. 'That this may be so,' he wrote, 'I long with the
longing of David for the water of Bethlehem. But no man need die
for the water a poet can give, and all can drink it to the end of
time, and their thirst be quenched and the pool never dry - and the
thirst and the water are both blessed.' It was in the Greeks
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