| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: knew the force of early education, and took
care that the blank of my understanding should be
filled with impressions of the value of money. My
mother used, upon all occasions, to inculcate some
salutary axioms, such as might incite me to KEEP
WHAT I HAD, AND GET WHAT I COULD; she informed me
that we were in a world, where ALL MUST CATCH THAT
CATCH CAN; and as I grew up, stored my memory
with deeper observations; restrained me from the
usual puerile expenses, by remarking that MANY A
LITTLE MADE A MICKLE; and, when I envied the finery
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Master of the World by Jules Verne: At any rate, the two men with the lantern were close at hand
returning down the ravine. Plainly they suspected nothing. Each
carrying a bundle of wood, they came forward and stopped upon the
quay.
Then one of them raised his voice, though not loudly. "Hullo!
Captain!"
"All right," answered a voice from the boat.
Wells murmured in my ear, "There are three!"
"Perhaps four," I answered, "perhaps five or six!"
The situation grew more complicated. Against a crew so numerous, what
ought we to do? The least imprudence might cost us dear! Now that the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: a sober judgment about an author whose personality I dislike.
In 1865, before the final breach with Turgénieff, he wrote,
again to Fet: "I do not like 'Enough'! A personal subjective
treatment is never good unless it is full of life and passion; but
the subjectivity in this case is full of lifeless suffering.
In the autumn of 1883, after Turgénieff's death, when
the family had gone into Moscow for the winter, my father stayed at
Yásnaya Polyána alone, with Agáfya
Mikháilovna, and set earnestly about reading through all
Turgénieff's works.
This is what he wrote to my mother at the time:
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