| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: says: 'There I lay all alone and all quiet, only the clock
ticking on the wall: "Who are you? What are you? Who are you?
What are you?" And I began to think: "Who am I? What am I?" and
so I spent the whole night thinking about it.'
"Why, imagine this is Socrates! 'Know thyself,'" said my
father, telling the story with great enthusiasm.
In the summer-time my mother's brother, Styópa
(Stephen Behrs), who was studying at the time in the school of
jurisprudence, used to come and stay with us. In the autumn he
used to go wolf-hunting with my father and us, with the
borzois, and Agáfya Mikháilovna loved him
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Out of Time's Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs: When he awoke, it was broad daylight, and the sight that met his
eyes made him rub them again and again to assure himself that
they were really open and that he was not dreaming. A broad
shaft of morning light poured through the open doorway in the
ceiling of the room which was about thirty feet square, or
roughly square, being irregular in shape, one side curving
outward, another being indented by what might have been the
corner of another building jutting into it, another alcoved by
three sides of an octagon, while the fourth was serpentine
in contour. Two windows let in more daylight, while two doors
evidently gave ingress to other rooms. The walls were partially
Out of Time's Abyss |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: Lithuanian dog.
I wish he had not. The childish horror of the deed clings
absurdly to the grizzled man. I am perfectly helpless against
it. Still, if he really had to, let us charitably remember that
he had eaten him on active service, while bearing up bravely
against the greatest military disaster of modern history, and, in
a manner, for the sake of his country. He had eaten him to
appease his hunger, no doubt, but also for the sake of an
unappeasable and patriotic desire, in the glow of a great faith
that lives still, and in the pursuit of a great illusion kindled
like a false beacon by a great man to lead astray the effort of a
A Personal Record |
