| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: the hard sobs struggled up into her throat and shook
her from head to foot. For a while she was caught
and tossed on great waves of anguish that left her
hardly conscious of anything but the blind struggle
against their assaults. Then, little by little, she
began to relive, with a dreadful poignancy, each
separate stage of her poor romance. Foolish things she
had said came back to her, gay answers Harney had made,
his first kiss in the darkness between the fireworks,
their choosing the blue brooch together, the way he had
teased her about the letters she had dropped in her
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: remains immovable in the house of Zeus while the other gods go in
procession, is called the first and eldest of the gods, and is probably the
symbol of the earth. The silence of Plato in these and in some other
passages (Laws) in which he might be expected to speak of the rotation of
the earth, is more favourable to the doctrine of its immobility than to the
opposite. If he had meant to say that the earth revolves on its axis, he
would have said so in distinct words, and have explained the relation of
its movements to those of the other heavenly bodies. (5) The meaning of
the words 'artificer of day and night' is literally true according to
Plato's view. For the alternation of day and night is not produced by the
motion of the heavens alone, or by the immobility of the earth alone, but
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: over Shropshire on two separate occasions. Now, go on. Why are
you Ernest in town and Jack in the country?
JACK. My dear Algy, I don't know whether you will be able to
understand my real motives. You are hardly serious enough. When
one is placed in the position of guardian, one has to adopt a very
high moral tone on all subjects. It's one's duty to do so. And as
a high moral tone can hardly be said to conduce very much to either
one's health or one's happiness, in order to get up to town I have
always pretended to have a younger brother of the name of Ernest,
who lives in the Albany, and gets into the most dreadful scrapes.
That, my dear Algy, is the whole truth pure and simple.
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