| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum: wrinkling his forehead in deep thought.
"This is somewhere, isn't it?" asked the
Patchwork Girl, laughing at the bewildered
looks of the others.
"The path is locked, the way is blocked,
Yet here we've innocently flocked;
And now we're here it's rather queer
There's no front door that can be knocked."
"Please don't, Scraps," said Ojo. "You make me nervous.
"Well," said Dorothy, "I'm glad of a little
rest, for that's a drea'ful steep path."
The Patchwork Girl of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: enormous breadth and depth. At a period when the power of artillery
was still in embryo, the position of Plessis, long since chosen by
Louis XI. for his favorite retreat, might be considered impregnable.
The castle, built of brick and stone, had nothing remarkable about it;
but it was surrounded by noble trees, and from its windows could be
seen, through vistas cut in the park (plexitium), the finest points of
view in the world. No rival mansion rose near this solitary castle,
standing in the very centre of the little plain reserved for the king
and guarded by four streams of water.
If we may believe tradition, Louis XI. occupied the west wing, and
from his chamber he could see, at a glance the course of the Loire,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: tracks which have conducted me to considerations and maxims, of which I
have formed a method that gives me the means, as I think, of gradually
augmenting my knowledge, and of raising it by little and little to the
highest point which the mediocrity of my talents and the brief duration of
my life will permit me to reach. For I have already reaped from it such
fruits that, although I have been accustomed to think lowly enough of
myself, and although when I look with the eye of a philosopher at the
varied courses and pursuits of mankind at large, I find scarcely one which
does not appear in vain and useless, I nevertheless derive the highest
satisfaction from the progress I conceive myself to have already made in
the search after truth, and cannot help entertaining such expectations of
Reason Discourse |
