| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: other people; namely, directness of egoism. That is what I
especially loved in Seryózha, though the word 'loved' is
inexact.
"I loved Nikólenka, but I admired Seryózha as
something alien and incomprehensible to me. It was a human life
very beautiful, but completely incomprehensible to me, mysterious,
and therefore especially attractive.
"He died only a few days ago, and while he was ill and while
he was dying he was just as inscrutable and just as dear to me as
he had been in the distant days of our childhood.
"In these latter days, in our old age, he was fonder of me,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: structures, the lagoon-islands or atolls, which have so long
excited the attention of voyagers, as well as in the no less
wonderful barrier-reefs, whether encircling small islands or
stretching for hundreds of miles along the shores of a
continent, are simply explained.
It may be asked, whether I can offer any direct evidence
of the subsidence of barrier-reefs or atolls; but it must be
borne in mind how difficult it must ever be to detect a
movement, the tendency of which is to hide under water the part
affected. Nevertheless, at Keeling atoll I observed on all
sides of the lagoon old cocoa-nut trees undermined and falling;
The Voyage of the Beagle |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: "I am going on a short journey; I shall not be away for very long. But
come with me to the Gymnase; I shall start just before midnight, after
I have had time to say good-bye to you."
"Poor pet! so you are really going, are you?" she said. She put her
arms round his neck, and drew down his head against her bodice.
"You are smothering me!" cried Castanier, with his face buried in
Aquilina's breast. That damsel turned to say in Jenny's ear, "Go to
Leon, and tell him not to come till one o'clock. If you do not find
him, and he comes here during the leave-taking, keep him in your
room.--Well," she went on, setting free Castanier, and giving a tweak
to the tip of his nose, "never mind, handsomest of seals that you are.
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