| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: wildness of thoughts like her own, till the poor dear child drove
her off because she outraged his modesty? I saw him often with his
parents at Sunday mass. The grace of God preserved him and made
him quite a gentleman in Paris. Perhaps it will touch Rita's
heart, too, some day. But she was awful then. When I wouldn't
listen to her complaints she would say: 'All right, sister, I
would just as soon go clothed in rain and wind.' And such a bag of
bones, too, like the picture of a devil's imp. Ah, my dear young
Monsieur, you don't know how wicked her heart is. You aren't bad
enough for that yourself. I don't believe you are evil at all in
your innocent little heart. I never heard you jeer at holy things.
 The Arrow of Gold |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: proceeded to their post.
Then D'Artagnan, being alone, struck a light and lighted a
small bit of tinder, mounted his horse and stopped at the
door in the midst of the soldiers. There, caressing as he
pretended, the animal with his hand, he put this bit of
burning tinder in his ear. It was necessary to be as good a
horseman as he was to risk such a scheme, for no sooner had
the animal felt the burning tinder than he uttered a cry of
pain and reared and jumped as if he had been mad.
The soldiers, whom he was nearly trampling, ran away.
"Help! help!" cried D'Artagnan; "stop -- my horse has the
 Twenty Years After |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: a false conclusion. There are free insolent minds which would
fain conceal and deny that they are broken, proud, incurable
hearts (the cynicism of Hamlet--the case of Galiani); and
occasionally folly itself is the mask of an unfortunate OVER-
ASSURED knowledge.--From which it follows that it is the part of
a more refined humanity to have reverence "for the mask," and not
to make use of psychology and curiosity in the wrong place.
271. That which separates two men most profoundly is a different
sense and grade of purity. What does it matter about all their
honesty and reciprocal usefulness, what does it matter about all
their mutual good-will: the fact still remains--they "cannot
 Beyond Good and Evil |