| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: souls.
VIVIE. Yes, I imagine there must have been a frightful waste of
time. Especially women's time.
PRAED. Oh, waste of life, waste of everything. But things are
improving. Do you know, I have been in a positive state of
excitement about meeting you ever since your magnificent
achievements at Cambridge: a thing unheard of in my day. It was
perfectly splendid, your tieing with the third wrangler. Just
the right place, you know. The first wrangler is always a
dreamy, morbid fellow, in whom the thing is pushed to the length
of a disease.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: without which I wouldn't have given a straw for the whole job.
It's the finest fullest intention of the lot, and the application
of it has been, I think, a triumph of patience, of ingenuity. I
ought to leave that to somebody else to say; but that nobody does
say it is precisely what we're talking about. It stretches, this
little trick of mine, from book to book, and everything else,
comparatively, plays over the surface of it. The order, the form,
the texture of my books will perhaps some day constitute for the
initiated a complete representation of it. So it's naturally the
thing for the critic to look for. It strikes me," my visitor
added, smiling, "even as the thing for the critic to find."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: It is a pleasant, instructive, and scholarly volume. The three
best being, quite out of sight - Crashaw, Otway, and Etherege.
They are excellent; I hesitate between them; but perhaps Crashaw is
the most brilliant
Your Webster is not my Webster; nor your Herrick my Herrick. On
these matters we must fire a gun to leeward, show our colours, and
go by. Argument is impossible. They are two of my favourite
authors: Herrick above all: I suppose they are two of yours.
Well, Janus-like, they do behold us two with diverse countenances,
few features are common to these different avatars; and we can but
agree to differ, but still with gratitude to our entertainers, like
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