| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: bore too if I talk to you about my worries, and I only mention
them because I want you to do me a favour--the very greatest of
favours."
Her eyes sought his once more, and she smiled inwardly at the
tinge of apprehension that she read in them.
"Why, of course--if it's anything I can manage---" He broke off,
and she guessed that his enjoyment was disturbed by the
remembrance of Mrs. Fisher's methods.
"The greatest of favours," she rejoined gently. "The fact is,
Judy is angry with me, and I want you to make my peace."
"Angry with you? Oh, come, nonsense---" his relief broke through
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: From a distance of years, looking at the remembered aspects of the
storms lived through, it is that impression which disengages itself
clearly from the great body of impressions left by many years of
intimate contact.
If you would know the age of the earth, look upon the sea in a
storm. The grayness of the whole immense surface, the wind furrows
upon the faces of the waves, the great masses of foam, tossed about
and waving, like matted white locks, give to the sea in a gale an
appearance of hoary age, lustreless, dull, without gleams, as
though it had been created before light itself.
Looking back after much love and much trouble, the instinct of
The Mirror of the Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: transfiguration of the world in thought, the meeting-point of the physical
and mental sciences, and also the mirror in which they are reflected,
present at every moment to the individual, and yet having a sort of eternal
or universal nature. When we analyze our own mental processes, we find
words everywhere in every degree of clearness and consistency, fading away
in dreams and more like pictures, rapidly succeeding one another in our
waking thoughts, attaining a greater distinctness and consecutiveness in
speech, and a greater still in writing, taking the place of one another
when we try to become emancipated from their influence. For in all
processes of the mind which are conscious we are talking to ourselves; the
attempt to think without words is a mere illusion,--they are always
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