| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde: GERALD. How then can women have so much power as you say they
have?
LORD ILLINGWORTH. The history of women is the history of the worst
form of tyranny the world has ever known. The tyranny of the weak
over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.
GERALD. But haven't women got a refining influence?
LORD ILLINGWORTH. Nothing refines but the intellect.
GERALD. Still, there are many different kinds of women, aren't
there?
LORD ILLINGWORTH. Only two kinds in society: the plain and the
coloured.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: life. In this negative way of looking at happiness, he acted in
strict conformity with the spirit of his world. For the doctrine of
pessimism had already been preached. It underlay the whole Brahman
philosophy, and everybody believed it implicitly. Already the East
looked at this life as an evil, and had affirmed for the individual
spirit extinction to be happier than existence. The wish for an end
to the ego, the hope to be eventually nothing, Gautama accepted for
a truism as undeniably as the Brahmans did. What he pronounced
false was the Brahman prospectus of the way to reach this desirable
impersonal state. Their road, be said, could not possibly land the
traveller where it professed, since it began wrong, and ended
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the notes of Mars' most beautiful melody, The Song of Love.
Ghek drew his dagger from its sheath. His eyes turned toward the
singing girl. Luud's glance wavered from the eyes of the man to
the face of Tara, and the instant that the latter's song
distracted his attention from his victim, Gahan of Gathol shook
himself and as with a supreme effort of will forced his eyes to
the wall above Luud's hideous head. Ghek raised his dagger above
his right shoulder, took a single quick step forward, and struck.
The girl's song ended in a stifled scream as she leaped forward
with the evident intention of frustrating the kaldane's purpose;
but she was too late, and well it was, for an instant later she
The Chessmen of Mars |
