| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: The electric log told me that the speed of the Nautilus
had been slackened. It was then going towards the surface;
but prudently emptying its reservoirs very slowly.
My heart beat fast. Were we going to emerge and regain the open
polar atmosphere? No! A shock told me that the Nautilus
had struck the bottom of the iceberg, still very thick,
judging from the deadened sound. We had in deed "struck," to use
a sea expression, but in an inverse sense, and at a thousand
feet deep. This would give three thousand feet of ice above us;
one thousand being above the water-mark. The iceberg was then
higher than at its borders--not a very reassuring fact.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: his breast, and he looked as though he would never wake.
Farther out old Mahon's face was upturned to the sky,
with the long white beard spread out on his breast, as
though he had been shot where he sat at the tiller; and a
man, all in a heap in the bows of the boat, slept with both
arms embracing the stem-head and with his cheek laid on
the gunwale. The East looked at them without a sound.
"I have known its fascinations since: I have seen the
mysterious shores, the still water, the lands of brown na-
tions, where a stealthy Nemesis lies in wait, pursues,
overtakes so many of the conquering race, who are proud
Youth |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: ENDYMION merely a pretty piece of Paganism, and Shelley, with his
dislike of actuality, was deaf to Wordsworth's message, being
repelled by its form, and Byron, that great passionate human
incomplete creature, could appreciate neither the poet of the cloud
nor the poet of the lake, and the wonder of Keats was hidden from
him. The realism of Euripides was hateful to Sophokles. Those
droppings of warm tears had no music for him. Milton, with his
sense of the grand style, could not understand the method of
Shakespeare, any more than could Sir Joshua the method of
Gainsborough. Bad artists always admire each other's work. They
call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly
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