| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: abler, more energetic, and often, to judge from the pages of De
Tocqueville, with far more sympathy and mercy for the wretched
peasantry--than was the count or marquis in the chateau above, who
looked down on him as a roturier; and let him nevertheless become
first his deputy, and then his master.
Understand me--I am not speaking against the hereditary principle of
the Ancien Regime, but against its caste principle--two widely
different elements, continually confounded nowadays.
The hereditary principle is good, because it is founded on fact and
nature. If men's minds come into the world blank sheets of paper--
which I much doubt--every other part and faculty of them comes in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: house. Then he could see nothing in the thickening vapour, and
kept to the path only by a sort of instinct, which also led him
to the very point on the opposite shore he wished to reach. A
great log had stranded there, at right angles to the bank,
forming a kind of jetty against which the swiftly flowing stream
broke with a loud ripple. He stepped on it with a quick but
steady motion, and in two strides found himself at the outer end,
with the rush and swirl of the foaming water at his feet.
Standing there alone, as if separated from the world; the
heavens, earth; the very water roaring under him swallowed up in
the thick veil of the morning fog, he breathed out the name of
Almayer's Folly |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thy self thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking;
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgement making.
Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.
LXXXVIII
When thou shalt be dispos'd to set me light,
And place my merit in the eye of scorn,
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