| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Poems of William Blake by William Blake: Like a reflection in a glass: like shadows in the water
Like dreams of infants, like a smile upon an infants face.
Like the doves voice, like transient day, like music in the air:
Ah! gentle may I lay me down and gentle rest my head.
And gentle sleep the sleep of death, and gently hear the voice
Of him that walketh in the garden in the evening time.
The Lilly of the valley breathing in the humble grass
Answerd the lovely maid and said: I am a watry weed,
And I am very small and love to dwell in lowly vales:
So weak the gilded butterfly scarce perches on my head
Yet I am visited from heaven and he that smiles on all
Poems of William Blake |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: to one's belief in mankind as his final burst of sincerity.
He struggled with himself, too. I saw it--I heard it.
I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint,
no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.
I kept my head pretty well; but when I had him at last stretched
on the couch, I wiped my forehead, while my legs shook under me
as though I had carried half a ton on my back down that hill.
And yet I had only supported him, his bony arm clasped round
my neck--and he was not much heavier than a child.
"When next day we left at noon, the crowd, of whose presence behind
the curtain of trees I had been acutely conscious all the time,
Heart of Darkness |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: racked and tortured him, mocking him, meantime, jeering in his face.
Ah, God, the horror of it, the monstrous, hideous, demoniacal
wickedness of it! He and his family, helpless women and children,
struggling to live, ignorant and defenseless and forlorn as they
were--and the enemies that had been lurking for them, crouching upon
their trail and thirsting for their blood! That first lying circular,
that smooth-tongued slippery agent! That trap of the extra payments,
the interest, and all the other charges that they had not the means
to pay, and would never have attempted to pay! And then all the
tricks of the packers, their masters, the tyrants who ruled them--
the shutdowns and the scarcity of work, the irregular hours and
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