| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: Europe are punishable in Asia, and a vice in Paris becomes a necessity
when you have passed the Azores. There are no such things as hard-and-
fast rules; there are only conventions adapted to the climate. Fling a
man headlong into one social melting pot after another, and
convictions and forms and moral systems become so many meaningless
words to him. The one thing that always remains, the one sure instinct
that nature has implanted in us, is the instinct of self-interest. If
you had lived as long as I have, you would know that there is but one
concrete reality invariable enough to be worth caring about, and that
is--GOLD. Gold represents every form of human power. I have traveled.
I found out that there were either hills or plains everywhere: the
Gobseck |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: difference of our notions, and, by mutual consent, we kept off
ground debateable.
Pelet's house was kept and his kitchen managed by his mother, a
real old Frenchwoman; she had been handsome--at least she told me
so, and I strove to believe her; she was now ugly, as only
continental old women can be; perhaps, though, her style of dress
made her look uglier than she really was. Indoors she would go
about without cap, her grey hair strangely dishevelled; then,
when at home, she seldom wore a gown--only a shabby cotton
camisole; shoes, too, were strangers to her feet, and in lieu of
them she sported roomy slippers, trodden down at the heels. On
The Professor |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: and we could skip ashore and not have to run the risk
of this row, I was so scared of Bud Dixon, but she
was an upper-river tub and there warn't no real chance
of that.
"Well, the time strung along and along, and that fellow
never come! Why, it strung along till dawn begun to break,
and still he never come. 'Thunder,' I says, 'what do you
make out of this?--ain't it suspicious?' 'Land!' Hal says,
'do you reckon he's playing us?--open the paper!' I done it,
and by gracious there warn't anything in it but a couple
of little pieces of loaf-sugar! THAT'S the reason he could
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