| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne: "That is what I have been, Pencroft."
"But what you are no longer, brave Ayrton!" returned the sailor warmly.
It was singular enough that so few bodies floated. Only five or six were
counted, which were already being carried by the current towards the open
sea. Very probably the convicts had not had time to escape, and the ship
lying over on her side, the greater number of them had remained below. Now
the current, by carrying the bodies of these miserable men out to sea,
would spare the colonists the sad task of burying them in some corner of
their island.
For two hours, Cyrus Harding and his companions were solely occupied in
hauling up the spars on to the sand, and then in spreading the sails which
The Mysterious Island |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: 'Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night to be in one
another's company? for if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt you
into one and let you grow together, so that being two you shall become one,
and while you live live a common life as if you were a single man, and
after your death in the world below still be one departed soul instead of
two--I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire, and whether you are
satisfied to attain this?'--there is not a man of them who when he heard
the proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and
melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very
expression of his ancient need (compare Arist. Pol.). And the reason is
that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: "I must show myself on deck," I reflected.
Of course, theoretically, I could do what I liked, with no
one to say nay to me within the whole circle of the horizon;
but to lock my cabin door and take the key away I did not dare.
Directly I put my head out of the companion I saw the group
of my two officers, the second mate barefooted, the chief
mate in long India-rubber boots, near the break of the poop,
and the steward halfway down the poop ladder talking to them eagerly.
He happened to catch sight of me and dived, the second
ran down on the main-deck shouting some order or other,
and the chief mate came to meet me, touching his cap.
The Secret Sharer |
