| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: tion.
After all that, it would hardly seem possible
to avoid becoming a fatalist? But who knows
for certain whether he is convinced of anything
or not? And how often is a deception of the
senses or an error of the reason accepted as a
conviction! . . . I prefer to doubt everything.
Such a disposition is no bar to decision of
character; on the contrary, so far as I am
concerned, I always advance more boldly when I
do not know what is awaiting me. You see,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: The Judge waited for him.
"Am I to understand that these--a--cow-boys attempted to mutiny,
and were discouraged in this attempt upon finding themselves less
skilful at lying than the man they had plotted to depose?"
I began an answer. "It was other qualities, sir, that happened to
be revealed and asserted by what you call his lying that--"
"And what am I to call it, if it is not lying? A competition in
deceit in which, I admit, he out did them.
"It's their way to--"
"Pardon me. Their way to lie? They bow down to the greatest in
this?"
The Virginian |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were
buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers,
there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these
and security were within. Without was the "Red Death".
It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his
seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously
abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends
at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.
It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me
tell of the rooms in which it was held. These were seven--an
imperial suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long
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