| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: and now you go back upon yourself. I confess I am utterly stultified
in my estimate of you."
"Dear friend, my only friend, don't be hard with me!
I can't help being as I am, I am convinced I am right--
that I see the light at last. But oh, how to profit by it!"
They walked along a few more steps till they were outside the building and she
had returned the key. "Can this be the girl," said Jude when she came back,
feeling a slight renewal of elasticity now that he was in the open street;
"can this be the girl who brought the pagan deities into this most
Christian city?--who mimicked Miss Fontover when she crushed them with
her heel?--quoted Gibbon, and Shelley, and Mill? Where are dear Apollo,
Jude the Obscure |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft: and before three o'clock there stood out against the north the
bulbous domes and fantastic spires of the onyx city. Rare and
curious did that archaic city rise above its walls and quays,
all of delicate black with scrolls, flutings, and arabesques of
inlaid gold. Tall and many-windowed were the houses, and carved
on every side with flowers and patterns whose dark symmetries
dazzled the eye with a beauty more poignant than light. Some ended
in swelling domes that tapered to a point, others in terraced
pyramids whereon rose clustered minarets displaying every phase
of strangeness and imagination. The walls were low, and pierced
by frequent gates, each under a great arch rising high above the
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: from the letter to the spirit. For morals are a personal
affair; in the war of righteousness every man fights for his
own hand; all the six hundred precepts of the Mishna cannot
shake my private judgment; my magistracy of myself is an
indefeasible charge, and my decisions absolute for the time
and case. The moralist is not a judge of appeal, but an
advocate who pleads at my tribunal. He has to show not the
law, but that the law applies. Can he convince me? then he
gains the cause. And thus you find Christ giving various
counsels to varying people, and often jealously careful to
avoid definite precept. Is he asked, for example, to divide
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