| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: has to found a business in times when the shareholder is as covetous
and keen as the inventor! What a great magnetizer must he be that can
create a Claparon and hit upon expedients never tried before! Do you
know the moral of it all? Our age is no better than we are; we live in
an era of greed; no one troubles himself about the intrinsic value of
a thing if he can only make a profit on it by selling it to somebody
else; so he passes it on to his neighbor. The shareholder that thinks
he sees a chance of making money is just as covetous as the founder
that offers him the opportunity of making it."
"Isn't he fine, our Couture? Isn't he fine?" exclaimed Bixiou, turning
to Blondet. "He will ask us next to erect statues to him as a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: get away. I have nothing material to say of my particular affairs
till I came to Tobolski, the capital city of Siberia, where I
continued some time on the following account.
We had now been almost seven months on our journey, and winter
began to come on apace; whereupon my partner and I called a council
about our particular affairs, in which we found it proper, as we
were bound for England, to consider how to dispose of ourselves.
They told us of sledges and reindeer to carry us over the snow in
the winter time, by which means, indeed, the Russians travel more
in winter than they can in summer, as in these sledges they are
able to run night and day: the snow, being frozen, is one
Robinson Crusoe |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: it shone like Good's patent leather boots. Then he put on the
mail shirt Sir Henry had given him and his 'moocha', and, having
cleaned up Inkosi-kaas a little, stood forth complete.
All this while, having hoisted the sail again as soon as we had
finished bathing, we had been progressing steadily for the land,
or, rather, for the mouth of a great river. Presently -- in
all about an hour and a half after the little boat had left us
-- we saw emerging from the river or harbour a large number of
boats, ranging up to ten or twelve tons burden. One of these
was propelled by twenty-four oars, and most of the rest sailed.
Looking through the glass we soon made out that the row-boat
Allan Quatermain |
