| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: of an inch wide.
Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the snow-crust,
in moonlight nights, in search of a partridge or other game, barking
raggedly and demoniacally like forest dogs, as if laboring with some
anxiety, or seeking expression, struggling for light and to be dogs
outright and run freely in the streets; for if we take the ages into
our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes
as well as men? They seemed to me to be rudimental, burrowing men,
still standing on their defence, awaiting their transformation.
Sometimes one came near to my window, attracted by my light, barked
a vulpine curse at me, and then retreated.
Walden |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad: tending a whale, could not in any way be credited with
a superior knowledge. Why should he have it? These
two men had come on that run together--the white and
the brown--on the same day: and of course a white man
would learn more in a week than the best native would
in a month. He was made to stick to the skipper as
though he were of some use--as the pilot-fish, they say,
is to the whale. But how--it was very marked--how?
A pilot-fish--a pilot--a . . . But if not superior
knowledge then . . .
Sterne's discovery was made. It was repugnant to his
End of the Tether |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: human voices blended in one sentiment of love.
Te Deum laudamus!
The chant went up from the black masses of men and women kneeling
in the cathedral, like a sudden breaking out of light in
darkness, and the silence was shattered as by a peal of thunder.
The voices floated up with the clouds of incense that had begun
to cast thin bluish veils over the fanciful marvels of the
architecture, and the aisles were filled with splendor and
perfume and light and melody. Even at the moment when that music
of love and thanksgiving soared up to the altar, Don Juan, too
well bred not to express his acknowledgments, too witty not to
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