| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: begin a war, and to end it.
Again, if war has some peculiar advantages for democratic
nations, on the other hand it exposes them to certain dangers
which aristocracies have no cause to dread to an equal extent. I
shall only point out two of these. Although war gratifies the
army, it embarrasses and often exasperates that countless
multitude of men whose minor passions every day require peace in
order to be satisfied. Thus there is some risk of its causing,
under another form, the disturbance it is intended to prevent.
No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a
democratic country. Not indeed that after every victory it is to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: "that you see I'm not afraid now."
"What I see, as I make it out, is that you've achieved something
almost unprecedented in the way of getting used to danger. Living
with it so long and so closely you've lost your sense of it; you
know it's there, but you're indifferent, and you cease even, as of
old, to have to whistle in the dark. Considering what the danger
is," May Bartram wound up, "I'm bound to say I don't think your
attitude could well be surpassed."
John Marcher faintly smiled. "It's heroic?"
"Certainly--call it that."
It was what he would have liked indeed to call it. "I AM then a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: robbed the treasury single-handed. There are three thousand two
hundred crowns. O, I trust it is enough!'
Her embarrassment was so obvious that the Prince was struck into a
muse, gazing in her face, with his hand still outstretched, and she
still holding him by the wrist. 'You!' he said at last. 'How?' And
then drawing himself up, 'O madam,' he cried, 'I understand. You
must indeed think meanly of the Prince.'
'Well, then, it was a lie!' she cried. 'The money is mine, honestly
my own - now yours. This was an unworthy act that you proposed.
But I love your honour, and I swore to myself that I should save it
in your teeth. I beg of you to let me save it' - with a sudden
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