| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: have said.---Farewell!---I do not say forgive me
the violence I have threatened, for it was necessary
to the display of thy character. Gold can be only
known by the application of the touchstone. I
will soon return, and hold further conference with
thee.''
He re-entered the turret-chamber, and descended
the stair, leaving Rebecca scarcely more terrified
at the prospect of the death to which she had been
so lately exposed, than at the furious ambition of
the bold bad man in whose power she found herself
 Ivanhoe |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: in the terrible place - he loafed about his "work" undeterred,
secretly agitated; not in the least "minding" that the whole
proposition, as they said, was vulgar and sordid, and ready to
climb ladders, to walk the plank, to handle materials and look wise
about them, to ask questions, in fine, and challenge explanations
and really "go into" figures.
It amused, it verily quite charmed him; and, by the same stroke, it
amused, and even more, Alice Staverton, though perhaps charming her
perceptibly less. She wasn't, however, going to be better-off for
it, as HE was - and so astonishingly much: nothing was now likely,
he knew, ever to make her better-off than she found herself, in the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
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