| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: Even by those who ought to give her praise,
Giving her blame amiss, and bad repute.
But she is blissful, and she hears it not;
Among the other primal creatures gladsome
She turns her sphere, and blissful she rejoices.
Let us descend now unto greater woe;
Already sinks each star that was ascending
When I set out, and loitering is forbidden."
We crossed the circle to the other bank,
Near to a fount that boils, and pours itself
Along a gully that runs out of it.
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: soon be two billions and climbing rapidly toward three billions.
The lifetime of the generation is increasing steadily. Men live
longer these days. Life is not so precarious. The newborn infant
has a greater chance for survival than at any time in the past.
Surgery and sanitation reduce the fatalities that accompany the
mischances of life and the ravages of disease. Men and women,
with deficiencies and weaknesses that in the past would have
effected their rapid extinction, live to-day and father and mother
a numerous progeny. And high as the food-getting efficiency may
soar, population is bound to soar after it. "The abysmal
fecundity" of life has not altered. Given the food, and life will
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: stopped short, alighted, threw the bridle of his horse over
the arm of Planchet and took the pistols from his saddle-bow
to fasten them to his girdle.
"What's the matter?" asked Planchet.
"This is the matter: be he ever so cunning he shall never
say I was his dupe. Stand here, don't stir, turn your back
to the road and wait for me."
Having thus spoken, D'Artagnan cleared the ditch by the
roadside and crossed the plain so as to wind around the
village. He had observed between the house that Madame de
Longueville inhabited and the convent of the Jesuits, an
Twenty Years After |
