| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: initiated, the hurry and preoccupation of everyone, and the
innumerable committees and commissions of whose existence he learned
every day, he felt that now, in 1809, here in Petersburg a vast
civil conflict was in preparation, the commander in chief of which was
a mysterious person he did not know, but who was supposed to be a
man of genius- Speranski. And this movement of reconstruction of which
Prince Andrew had a vague idea, and Speranski its chief promoter,
began to interest him so keenly that the question of the army
regulations quickly receded to a secondary place in his consciousness.
Prince Andrew was most favorably placed to secure good reception
in the highest and most diverse Petersburg circles of the day. The
War and Peace |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Such loveless kindnesses there are
In that grimacing, common way,
That old, unhonoured social war.
Love but my dog and love my love,
Adore with me a common star -
I value not the rest above
The ashes of a bad cigar.
TO MISS CORNISH
THEY tell me, lady, that to-day
On that unknown Australian strand -
Some time ago, so far away -
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: breath that was almost a sigh. It forced its way, in spite of a
little struggle to repress it. Then starting and blushing, she
looked quickly round the circle, as if they had caught a glimpse
into her bosom. The stranger asked what she had been thinking of.
"Nothing," answered she, with a downcast smile. "Only I felt
lonesome just then."
"Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other
people's hearts," said he, half seriously. "Shall I tell the
secrets of yours? For I know what to think when a young girl
shivers by a warm hearth, and complains of lonesomeness at her
mother's side. Shall I put these feelings into words?"
Twice Told Tales |
