| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: -whether we should be on a par with the other civilised nations of
Europe, like them the "heirs of all the ages," with our share not
only of Roman Christianity and Roman centralisation--a member of the
great comity of European nations, held together in one Christian
bond by the Pope--but heirs also of Roman civilisation, Roman
literature, Roman Law; and therefore, in due time, of Greek
philosophy and art. No less a question than this, it seems to me,
hung in the balance during that fortnight of autumn, 1066.
Poor old Edward the Confessor, holy, weak, and sad, lay in his new
choir of Westminster--where the wicked ceased from troubling, and
the weary were at rest. The crowned ascetic had left no heir
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: east coast was dead, and his soul, delivered from the trammels of
his earthly folly, stood now in the presence of Infinite Wisdom.
On the upturned face there was that serene look which follows the
sudden relief from anguish and pain, and it testified silently
before the cloudless heaven that the man lying there under the
gaze of indifferent eyes had been permitted to forget before he
died.
Abdulla looked down sadly at this Infidel he had fought so long
and had bested so many times. Such was the reward of the
Faithful!
Yet in the Arab's old heart there was a feeling of regret for
Almayer's Folly |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: They, thinking that her clear germander eye
Droopt in the giant-factoried city-gloom,
Came, with a month's leave given them, to the sea:
For which his gains were dock'd, however small:
Small were his gains, and hard his work; besides,
Their slender household fortunes (for the man
Had risk'd his little) like the little thrift,
Trembled in perilous places o'er a deep:
And oft, when sitting all alone, his face
Would darken, as he cursed his credulousness,
And that one unctuous mount which lured him, rogue,
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