| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: masked, all black from head to foot except for some flowers in her
hat, she looked up mechanically at the clock. She thought it must
have stopped. She could not believe that only two minutes had
passed since she had looked at it last. Of course not. It had
been stopped all the time. As a matter of fact, only three minutes
had elapsed from the moment she had drawn the first deep, easy
breath after the blow, to this moment when Mrs Verloc formed the
resolution to drown herself in the Thames. But Mrs Verloc could
not believe that. She seemed to have heard or read that clocks and
watches always stopped at the moment of murder for the undoing of
the murderer. She did not care. "To the bridge - and over I go."
The Secret Agent |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: at your hands full of violence and wanton insolence; I restore
him to you in his right mind and fit to serve his country."
LXXXIX
A money-changer may not reject Caesar's coin, nor may the
seller of herbs, but must when once the coin is shown, deliver
what is sold for it, whether he will or no. So is it also with
the Soul. Once the Good appears, it attracts towards itself; evil
repels. But a clear and certain impression of the Good the Soul
will never reject, any more than men do Caesar's coin. On this
hangs every impulse alike of Man and God.
XC
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: But she, that never cop'd with stranger eyes,
Could pick no meaning from their parling looks,
Nor read the subtle-shining secrecies
Writ in the glassy margents of such books;
She touch'd no unknown baits, nor fear'd no hooks;
Nor could she moralize his wanton sight,
More than his eyes were open'd to the light.
He stories to her ears her husband's fame,
Won in the fields of fruitful Italy;
And decks with praises Collatine's high name,
Made glorious by his manly chivalry
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