| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: "I'll tell you. Towards the last I used to shut myself up in my
berth and cry."
"Cry?"
"Shed tears," he explained briefly, and rolled up the chart.
I can answer for it, he was a good man - as good as ever stepped
upon a ship's deck - but he could not bear the feeling of a dead
ship under his feet: the sickly, disheartening feeling which the
men of some "overdue" ships that come into harbour at last under a
jury-rig must have felt, combated, and overcome in the faithful
discharge of their duty.
XX.
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: glanced again and again from his father to the flask. The
lamplight flickered. There was a deep silence; the viol was mute.
Juan Belvidero thought that he saw his father stir, and trembled.
The changeless gaze of those accusing eyes frightened him; he
closed them hastily, as he would have closed a loose shutter
swayed by the wind of an autumn night. He stood there motionless,
lost in a world of thought.
Suddenly the silence was broken by a shrill sound like the
creaking of a rusty spring. It startled Don Juan; he all but
dropped the phial. A sweat, colder than the blade of a dagger,
issued through every pore. It was only a piece of clockwork, a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: Ellie, that was evident-one of those hideous unforeseeable
blunders that may cause one's cleverest plans to crumble at a
stroke; and again Susy shuddered at the frailty of her bliss.
But her old training stood her in good stead. There had been
more than one moment in her past when everything-somebody
else's everything-had depended on her keeping a cool head and a
clear glance. It would have been a wonder if now, when she felt
her own everything at stake, she had not been able to put up as
good a defence.
"What is it?" she repeated impatiently, as Lansing continued to
remain silent.
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