| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: except of course that she might have finer nerves. That was what
women had where they were interested; they made out things, where
people were concerned, that the people often couldn't have made out
for themselves. Their nerves, their sensibility, their
imagination, were conductors and revealers, and the beauty of May
Bartram was in particular that she had given herself so to his
case. He felt in these days what, oddly enough, he had never felt
before, the growth of a dread of losing her by some catastrophe--
some catastrophe that yet wouldn't at all be the catastrophe:
partly because she had almost of a sudden begun to strike him as
more useful to him than ever yet, and partly by reason of an
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: stammered--
"You wicked woman--you disgrace me. But there! You always resembled
your father. What do you think will become of you . . . in the other
world? In this . . . Oh misery!"
She was very hot now. She felt burning inside. She wrung her
perspiring hands--and suddenly, starting in great haste, began to
look for her big shawl and umbrella, feverishly, never once glancing
at her daughter, who stood in the middle of the room following her
with a gaze distracted and cold.
"Nothing worse than in this," said Susan.
Her mother, umbrella in hand and trailing the shawl over the floor,
Tales of Unrest |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: ALCIBIADES: I do.
SOCRATES: And there is still another case which will also perhaps appear
strange to you, if you will consider it? (The reading is here uncertain.)
ALCIBIADES: What is that, Socrates?
SOCRATES: It may be, in short, that the possession of all the sciences, if
unaccompanied by the knowledge of the best, will more often than not injure
the possessor. Consider the matter thus:--Must we not, when we intend
either to do or say anything, suppose that we know or ought to know that
which we propose so confidently to do or say?
ALCIBIADES: Yes, in my opinion.
SOCRATES: We may take the orators for an example, who from time to time
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