| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: his wife, that she reddened and shuddered. He mistook the fear of the
innocent creature for remorse.
"Perhaps it is the beginning of a regular childbirth," he said.
"What then?" she said.
"In any case, I must have a proper man here," he said. "I will fetch
one."
The gloomy look which accompanied these words overcame the countess,
who fell back in the bed with a moan, caused more by a sense of her
fate than by the agony of the coming crisis; that moan convinced the
count of the justice of the suspicions that were rising in his mind.
Affecting a calmness which the tones of his voice, his gestures, and
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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: the Nautilus had risen about a hundred and fifty feet,
but it still made the same angle with the perpendicular.
Suddenly a slight movement was felt in the hold.
Evidently it was righting a little. Things hanging in
the saloon were sensibly returning to their normal position.
The partitions were nearing the upright. No one spoke.
With beating hearts we watched and felt the straightening.
The boards became horizontal under our feet.
Ten minutes passed.
"At last we have righted!" I exclaimed.
"Yes," said Captain Nemo, going to the door of the saloon.
 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: the dust like a worm.
By what I have read in books, I think few that have held a pen
were ever really wearied, or they would write of it more
strongly. I had no care of my life, neither past nor future, and
I scarce remembered there was such a lad as David Balfour. I did
not think of myself, but just of each fresh step which I was sure
would be my last, with despair -- and of Alan, who was the cause
of it, with hatred. Alan was in the right trade as a soldier;
this is the officer's part to make men continue to do things,
they know not wherefore, and when, if the choice was offered,
they would lie down where they were and be killed. And I dare
 Kidnapped |