| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: and the thing gone no further! But there seemed elements of
success about this enterprise. It was to be a story for
boys; no need of psychology or fine writing; and I had a boy
at hand to be a touchstone. Women were excluded. I was
unable to handle a brig (which the HISPANIOLA should have
been), but I thought I could make shift to sail her as a
schooner without public shame. And then I had an idea for
John Silver from which I promised myself funds of
entertainment; to take an admired friend of mine (whom the
reader very likely knows and admires as much as I do), to
deprive him of all his finer qualities and higher graces of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.
The objections which have been brought against a standing army,
and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail,
may also at last be brought against a standing government.
The standing army is only an arm of the standing government.
The government itself, which is only the mode which the people
have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused
and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the
present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals
using the standing government as their tool; for in the outset,
the people would not have consented to this measure.
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: life with the Pelican Company for 3000 pounds. As soon as the
necessary formalities had been gone through and the policy
executed, he dropped some crystals of strychnine into his coffee as
they sat together one evening after dinner. He himself did not
gain any monetary advantage by doing this. His aim was simply to
revenge himself on the first office that had refused to pay him the
price of his sin. His friend died the next day in his presence,
and he left Boulogne at once for a sketching tour through the most
picturesque parts of Brittany, and was for some time the guest of
an old French gentleman, who had a beautiful country house at St.
Omer. From this he moved to Paris, where he remained for several
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