| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Heritage of the Desert by Zane Grey: mane turned from the grain, and lowered his head to munch a few blades of
desert grass.
Then the journey began, and the night fell black. A cool wind blew from
the west, the white stars blinked, the weird moon rose with its ghastly
glow. Huge bowlders rose before him in grotesque shapes, tombs and
pillars and statues of Nature's dead, carved by wind and sand. But some
had life in Hare's disordered fancy. They loomed and towered over him,
and stalked abroad and peered at him with deep-set eyes.
Hare fought with all his force against this mood of gloom. Waif eras not
a phantom; he trotted forward with unerring instinct; and he would find
water, and that meant life. Silvermane, desert-steeled, would travel to
 The Heritage of the Desert |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: cretinous stupefaction half their lives, suddenly awaking to the
fact of there being a God, fancy themselves therefore His peculiar
people and messengers; your sectarians of every species, small and
great, Catholic or Protestant, of high church or low, in so far as
they think themselves exclusively in the right and others wrong;
and, pre-eminently, in every sect, those who hold that men can be
saved by thinking rightly instead of doing rightly, by word instead
of act, and wish instead of work;--these are the true fog children--
clouds, these, without water; bodies, these, of putrescent vapour
and skin, without blood or flesh: blown bag-pipes for the fiends to
pipe with--corrupt, and corrupting,--" Swollen with wind, and the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: endurance, which was before held in dishonour, is courage.
LACHES: Very true.
SOCRATES: And are we right in saying so?
LACHES: Indeed, Socrates, I am sure that we are not right.
SOCRATES: Then according to your statement, you and I, Laches, are not
attuned to the Dorian mode, which is a harmony of words and deeds; for our
deeds are not in accordance with our words. Any one would say that we had
courage who saw us in action, but not, I imagine, he who heard us talking
about courage just now.
LACHES: That is most true.
SOCRATES: And is this condition of ours satisfactory?
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