| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: not fail her. With a cheek flushed by hope, and an eye
straining with curiosity, her fingers grasped the handle
of a drawer and drew it forth. It was entirely empty.
With less alarm and greater eagerness she seized a second,
a third, a fourth; each was equally empty. Not one was
left unsearched, and in not one was anything found.
Well read in the art of concealing a treasure, the possibility
of false linings to the drawers did not escape her,
and she felt round each with anxious acuteness in vain.
The place in the middle alone remained now unexplored;
and though she had "never from the first had the smallest
Northanger Abbey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: distance, when he felt the contact of the fresh air and heard the
noise of the crows flying from Moscow across the field, and when
afterwards light gleamed from the east and the sun's rim appeared
solemnly from behind a cloud, and the cupolas and crosses, the
hoarfrost, the distance and the river, all began to sparkle in the
glad light- Pierre felt a new joy and strength in life such as he
had never before known. And this not only stayed with him during the
whole of his imprisonment, but even grew in strength as the
hardships of his position increased.
That feeling of alertness and of readiness for anything was still
further strengthened in him by the high opinion his fellow prisoners
War and Peace |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: "Owen knows I meant to leave tomorrow," Darrow went on. "Any
sudden change of plan may make him think..."
Oh, she saw his inevitable logic: the horror of it was on
every side of her! It had seemed possible to control her
grief and face Darrow calmly while she was upheld by the
belief that this was their last hour together, that after he
had passed out of the room there would be no fear of seeing
him again, no fear that his nearness, his look, his voice,
and all the unseen influences that flowed from him, would
dissolve her soul to weakness. But her courage failed at the
idea of having to conspire with him to shield Owen, of
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