| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: had spent a part of the evening there, it was ostensibly to go to
his club. Everything was easy in fine; everything conspired and
promoted: there was truly even in the strain of his experience
something that glossed over, something that salved and simplified,
all the rest of consciousness. He circulated, talked, renewed,
loosely and pleasantly, old relations - met indeed, so far as he
could, new expectations and seemed to make out on the whole that in
spite of the career, of such different contacts, which he had
spoken of to Miss Staverton as ministering so little, for those who
might have watched it, to edification, he was positively rather
liked than not. He was a dim secondary social success - and all
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: for them through the sea. These believing ones saw through the spray a
dim speck of light flickering in the window of a fisherman's hut on
the shore, and each one, as he pushed on bravely towards the light,
seemed to hear the voice of his fellow crying, "Courage!" through all
the roaring of the surf; yet no one had spoken a word--so absorbed was
each by his own peril. In this way they reached the shore.
When they were all seated near the fisherman's fire, they looked round
in vain for their guide with the light about him. The sea washed up
the steersman at the base of the cliff on which the cottage stood; he
was clinging with might and main to the plank as a sailor can cling
when death stares him in the face; the MAN went down and rescued the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: refrained from making his petition. The mass of mankind would not decline
to accept a tyranny, or the command of an army, or any of the numerous
things which cause more harm than good: but rather, if they had them not,
would have prayed to obtain them. And often in a short space of time they
change their tone, and wish their old prayers unsaid. Wherefore also I
suspect that men are entirely wrong when they blame the gods as the authors
of the ills which befall them (compare Republic): 'their own presumption,'
or folly (whichever is the right word)--
'Has brought these unmeasured woes upon them.' (Homer. Odyss.)
He must have been a wise poet, Alcibiades, who, seeing as I believe, his
friends foolishly praying for and doing things which would not really
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