| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: embodiment of those dreams of impossible loveliness that linger by
a young man's pillow on midsummer nights; yet, because it held
something more than the attraction of health and youth and
shapeliness, it troubled him, and in its presence he felt as the
Goths before the white marbles in the Roman Capitol, not knowing
whether they were men or gods. At times he felt like uncovering
his head before it, again the fury seized him to break and despoil,
to find the clay in this spirit-thing and stamp upon it. Away from
her, he longed to strike out with his arms, and take and hold; it
maddened him that this woman whom he could break in his hands
should be so much stronger than he. But near her, he never
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde: stand the American young lady.
LORD ILLINGWORTH. Why?
MRS. ALLONBY. She told me yesterday, and in quite a loud voice
too, that she was only eighteen. It was most annoying.
LORD ILLINGWORTH. One should never trust a woman who tells one her
real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one
anything.
MRS. ALLONBY. She is a Puritan besides -
LORD ILLINGWORTH. Ah, that is inexcusable. I don't mind plain
women being Puritans. It is the only excuse they have for being
plain. But she is decidedly pretty. I admire her immensely.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: 'that all true believers break their eggs at the convenient end.'
And which is the convenient end, seems, in my humble opinion to
be left to every man's conscience, or at least in the power of
the chief magistrate to determine. Now, the Big-endian exiles
have found so much credit in the emperor of Blefuscu's court, and
so much private assistance and encouragement from their party
here at home, that a bloody war has been carried on between the
two empires for six-and-thirty moons, with various success;
during which time we have lost forty capital ships, and a much a
greater number of smaller vessels, together with thirty thousand
of our best seamen and soldiers; and the damage received by the
Gulliver's Travels |
