| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Vision Splendid by William MacLeod Raine: Success comes to the fellow who goes after it in the right way."
"And suppose a fellow doesn't care to go after it?"
"He stays a nobody."
James was in evening dress, immaculate from clean-shaven cheek to
patent leather shoes. He had a well-filled figure and a handsome
face with a square, clean-cut jaw. His cousin admired the young
fellow's virile competency. It was his opinion that James K.
Farnum was the last person he knew likely to remain a nobody. He
knew how to conform, to take the color of his thinking from the
dominant note of his environment, but he had, too, a capacity for
leadership.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather: the windows, and back again to Bartley. She
rose uncertainly, touched his hair with her
hand, then sank back upon her stool.
"I'll do anything you wish me to, Bartley,"
she said tremulously. "I can't stand
seeing you miserable."
"I can't live with myself any longer,"
he answered roughly.
He rose and pushed the chair behind him
and began to walk miserably about the room,
seeming to find it too small for him.
 Alexander's Bridge |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: really scientific men, it may be otherwise--"better," if you
will; there there may really be such a thing as an "impulse to
knowledge," some kind of small, independent clock-work, which,
when well wound up, works away industriously to that end, WITHOUT
the rest of the scholarly impulses taking any material part
therein. The actual "interests" of the scholar, therefore, are
generally in quite another direction--in the family, perhaps, or
in money-making, or in politics; it is, in fact, almost
indifferent at what point of research his little machine is
placed, and whether the hopeful young worker becomes a good
philologist, a mushroom specialist, or a chemist; he is not
 Beyond Good and Evil |