| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: great gifts and unquestionable usefulness. I have the industry
and power of endurance of a camel, and that is important, and I
have talent, which is even more important. Moreover, while I am
on this subject, I am a well-educated, modest, and honest fellow.
I have never poked my nose into literature or politics; I have
never sought popularity in polemics with the ignorant; I have
never made speeches either at public dinners or at the funerals
of my friends. . . . In fact, there is no slur on my learned
name, and there is no complaint one can make against it. It is
fortunate.
The bearer of that name, that is I, see myself as a man of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: what I am going to do."
Said the doctor: "Five times out of ten, in the chair where you
are sitting, people talk like that, perfectly sincerely. Each
one believes himself more unhappy than all the others; but after
thinking it over, and listening to me, they understand that this
disease is a companion with whom one can live. Just as in every
household, one gets along at the cost of mutual concessions,
that's all. Come, sir, I tell you again, there is nothing about
it that is not perfectly ordinary, perfectly natural, perfectly
common; it is an accident which can happen to any one. It is a
great mistake that people speak if this as the 'French Disease,'
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: nauseous, so long as we seasoned it with these dreams. But
perhaps the most exciting moments I ever had over a meal, were
in the case of calves' feet jelly. It was hardly possible not
to believe - and you may be sure, so far from trying, I did
all I could to favour the illusion - that some part of it was
hollow, and that sooner or later my spoon would lay open the
secret tabernacle of the golden rock. There, might some
miniature RED BEARD await his hour; there, might one find the
treasures of the FORTY THIEVES, and bewildered Cassim beating
about the walls. And so I quarried on slowly, with bated
breath, savouring the interest. Believe me, I had little
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