| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: 5. Princes, especially new ones, have found more fidelity and
assistance in those men who in the beginning of their rule were
distrusted than among those who in the beginning were trusted.
Pandolfo Petrucci, Prince of Siena, ruled his state more by those who
had been distrusted than by others. But on this question one cannot
speak generally, for it varies so much with the individual; I will
only say this, that those men who at the commencement of a princedom
have been hostile, if they are of a description to need assistance to
support themselves, can always be gained over with the greatest ease,
and they will be tightly held to serve the prince with fidelity,
inasmuch as they know it to be very necessary for them to cancel by
The Prince |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: made any demand upon his reserve of oxygen. My sleep was
painful that night; hope and fear besieged me by turns:
I rose several times. The groping of the Nautilus continued.
About three in the morning, I noticed that the lower surface
of the iceberg was only about fifty feet deep. One hundred
and fifty feet now separated us from the surface of the waters.
The iceberg was by degrees becoming an ice-field, the mountain
a plain. My eyes never left the manometer. We were still rising
diagonally to the surface, which sparkled under the electric rays.
The iceberg was stretching both above and beneath into
lengthening slopes; mile after mile it was getting thinner.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lucile by Owen Meredith: She unconsciously made it her bulwark and tower,
And built in it her refuge, whence lightly she hurl'd
Her contempt at the fashions and forms of the world.
And the permanent cause why she now miss'd and fail'd
That firm hold upon life she so keenly assail'd,
Was, in all those diurnal occasions that place
Say--the world and the woman opposed face to face,
Where the woman must yield, she, refusing to stir,
Offended the world, which in turn wounded her.
As before, in the old-fashion'd manner, I fit
To this character, also, its moral: to wit,
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