| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: could have happened more perfectly agreeable. I carried it on
as far as this with a sort of indifferency that he often wondered
at, more than at first, but which was the only support of his
courtship; and I mention it the rather to intimate again to the
ladies that nothing but want of courage for such an indifferency
makes our sex so cheap, and prepares them to be ill-used as
they are; would they venture the loss of a pretending fop now
and then, who carries it high upon the point of his own merit,
they would certainly be less slighted, and courted more. Had
I discovered really and truly what my great fortune was, and
that in all I had not full #500 when he expected #1500, yet I
Moll Flanders |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: In prison, and at last led forth to be
A pander to Philistine revelry,--
Upon the pillars of the temple laid
His desperate hands, and in its overthrow
Destroyed himself, and with him those who made
A cruel mockery of his sightless woe;
The poor, blind Slave, the scoff and jest of all,
Expired, and thousands perished in the fall!
There is a poor, blind Samson in this land,
Shorn of his strength and bound in bonds of steel,
Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: over her eyes, and poured out her heart in sad speech, in a quiet
voice, like the breeze which, rising on a beautiful evening, blows
through the thick growth of reeds beside the stream. They rustle,
murmur, and give forth delicately mournful sounds, and the traveller,
pausing in inexplicable sadness, hears them, and heeds not the fading
light, nor the gay songs of the peasants which float in the air as
they return from their labours in meadow and stubble-field, nor the
distant rumble of the passing waggon.
"Am not I worthy of eternal pity? Is not the mother that bore me
unhappy? Is it not a bitter lot which has befallen me? Art not thou a
cruel executioner, fate? Thou has brought all to my feet--the highest
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
