| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: without her there could be no splendour and no joy in existence.
Crouching in his shady hiding-place, he closed his eyes, trying
to evoke the gracious and charming image of the white figure that
for him was the beginning and the end of life. With eyes shut
tight, his teeth hard set, he tried in a great effort of
passionate will to keep his hold on that vision of supreme
delight. In vain! His heart grew heavy as the figure of Nina
faded away to be replaced by another vision this time--a vision
of armed men, of angry faces, of glittering arms--and he seemed
to hear the hum of excited and triumphant voices as they
discovered him in his hiding-place. Startled by the vividness of
Almayer's Folly |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: Sweden, Italy, in Constantinople, and perhaps in the far East, with
barber-surgeons, alchemists, magicians, haunting mines, and forges
of Sweden and Bohemia, especially those which the rich merchants of
that day had in the Tyrol.
It was from that work, he said, that he learnt what he knew: from
the study of nature and of facts. He had heard all the learned
doctors and professors; he had read all their books, and they could
teach him nothing. Medicine was his monarch, and no one else. He
declared that there was more wisdom under his bald pate than in
Aristotle and Galen, Hippocrates and Rhasis. And fact seemed to be
on his side. He reappeared in Germany about 1525, and began working
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: was a dainty fellow, for whom seemed to have been invented rich laces,
silken hose, and cancellated shoes. His long dark locks were pretty as
a lady's ringlets, and he was, to be brief, a child with whom all the
women would be glad to play. One day the Dauphine, niece of the Pope,
said laughingly to the Queen of Navarre, who did not dislike these
little jokes, "that this page was a plaster to cure every ache," which
caused the pretty little Tourainian to blush, because, being only
sixteen, he took this gallantry as a reproach.
Now on his return from Italy the Cadet of Maille found the slipper of
marriage ready for his foot, which his mother had obtained for him in
the person of Mademoiselle d'Annebaut, who was a graceful maiden of
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
