| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Love and Friendship by Jane Austen: rejecting him. These considerations we were determined to
represent to her in their proper light and doubted not of meeting
with the desired success from one naturally so well disposed;
whose errors in the affair had only arisen from a want of proper
confidence in her own opinion, and a suitable contempt of her
father's. We found her indeed all that our warmest wishes could
have hoped for; we had no difficulty to convince her that it was
impossible she could love Graham, or that it was her Duty to
disobey her Father; the only thing at which she rather seemed to
hesitate was our assertion that she must be attached to some
other Person. For some time, she persevered in declaring that
 Love and Friendship |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: other kind of verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but by power
divine. Had he learned by rules of art, he would have known how to speak
not of one theme only, but of all; and therefore God takes away the minds
of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy
prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not
of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of
unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them
he is conversing with us. And Tynnichus the Chalcidian affords a striking
instance of what I am saying: he wrote nothing that any one would care to
remember but the famous paean which is in every one's mouth, one of the
finest poems ever written, simply an invention of the Muses, as he himself
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: 'Have you started a morbid craving? You've never been yourself
anyway since you lost that beard. I believe now it was where you
kept your senses.'
'Mr Finsbury,' said the drawing-master, 'I have tried to reason
this matter out, and, with your permission, I should like to lay
before you the results.'
'Fire away,' said Michael; 'but please, Pitman, remember it's
Sunday, and let's have no bad language.'
'There are three views open to us,' began Pitman. 'First this may
be connected with the barrel; second, it may be connected with Mr
Semitopolis's statue; and third, it may be from my wife's
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