| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: sense that she was going to rest, took off her gloves and bonnet,
while she was leaning against a statue in the entrance-hall,
and talking to the housekeeper. At last she said--
"I must stay here a little, Mrs. Kell. I will go into the library
and write you some memoranda from my uncle's letter, if you will
open the shutters for me."
"The shutters are open, madam," said Mrs. Kell, following Dorothea,
who had walked along as she spoke. "Mr. Ladislaw is there,
looking for something."
(Will had come to fetch a portfolio of his own sketches which he
had missed in the act of packing his movables, and did not choose
 Middlemarch |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: over.
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: Also we said that truth was to form an element in the mixture.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then, if we are not able to hunt the good with one idea only,
with three we may catch our prey; Beauty, Symmetry, Truth are the three,
and these taken together we may regard as the single cause of the mixture,
and the mixture as being good by reason of the infusion of them.
PROTARCHUS: Quite right.
SOCRATES: And now, Protarchus, any man could decide well enough whether
pleasure or wisdom is more akin to the highest good, and more honourable
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: With this he was less pleased; he had expected the traces
of resentment, and he was actually disappointed at not finding them.
But here was the little house of which his companion had spoken,
and it seemed, indeed, a rather bad one. That is, it was one of
those diminutive structures which are known at French watering-places
as "chalets," and, with an exiguity of furniture, are let for the season
to families that pride themselves upon their powers of contraction.
This one was a very humble specimen of its class, though it was
doubtless a not inadequate abode for two quiet and frugal women.
It had a few inches of garden, and there were flowers in pots
in the open windows, where some extremely fresh white curtains
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