| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: saw me, she said,--
"What is it?"
I did not answer; my eyes were moist. The night before, Pauline had
understood my sorrows, as she now understood my joy, with the magical
sensitiveness of a harp that obeys the variations of the atmosphere.
Human life has glorious moments. Together we walked in silence along
the beach. The sky was cloudless, the sea without a ripple; others
might have thought them merely two blue surfaces, the one above the
other, but we--we who heard without the need of words, we who could
evoke between these two infinitudes the illusions that nourish youth,
--we pressed each other's hands at every change in the sheet of water
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants. Lastly,
of putting a spirit of honesty, industry, and skill into our
shop-keepers, who, if a resolution could now be taken to buy only
our native goods, would immediately unite to cheat and exact upon
us in the price, the measure, and the goodness, nor could ever
yet be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though
often and earnestly invited to it.
Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like
expedients, 'till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that
there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them
into practice.
A Modest Proposal |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: practicality--that was close at hand.
That force took shape in the middle of spring with the arrival of Tom
Buchanan. There was a wholesome bulkiness about his person and his
position, and Daisy was flattered. Doubtless there was a certain
struggle and a certain relief. The letter reached Gatsby while he was
still at Oxford.
It was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of
the windows down-stairs, filling the house with gray-turning,
gold-turning light. The shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew
and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. There was a
slow, pleasant movement in the air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool,
The Great Gatsby |
