| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: believed that it must be Wednesday or Thursday or
even Friday or Saturday, now, and that the search
had been given over. He proposed to explore another
passage. He felt willing to risk Injun Joe and all
other terrors. But Becky was very weak. She had
sunk into a dreary apathy and would not be roused.
She said she would wait, now, where she was, and die
-- it would not be long. She told Tom to go with the
kite-line and explore if he chose; but she implored him
to come back every little while and speak to her; and
she made him promise that when the awful time came,
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: I shall never hesitate to cite Cesare Borgia and his actions. This
duke entered the Romagna with auxiliaries, taking there only French
soldiers, and with them he captured Imola and Forli; but afterwards,
such forces not appearing to him reliable, he turned to mercenaries,
discerning less danger in them, and enlisted the Orsini and Vitelli;
whom presently, on handling and finding them doubtful, unfaithful, and
dangerous, he destroyed and turned to his own men. And the difference
between one and the other of these forces can easily be seen when one
considers the difference there was in the reputation of the duke, when
he had the French, when he had the Orsini and Vitelli, and when he
relied on his own soldiers, on whose fidelity he could always count
The Prince |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: conscience told her how dishonoring to a great queen was the work that
she was doing. Catherine, on the other hand, had yielded out of fear;
she was still afraid of being rightly understood, and she trembled for
her future. Both women, one ashamed and angry, the other filled with
hatred and yet calm, went to the embrasure of the window and leaned
against the casing, one to right, the other to left, silent; but their
feelings were expressed in such speaking glances that they averted
their eyes and, with mutual artfulness, gazed through the window at
the sky. These two great and superior women had, at this crisis, no
greater art of behavior than the vulgarest of their sex. Perhaps it is
always thus when circumstances arise which overwhelm the human being.
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