| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: could have engendered and put together. With all this sail, poor Yorick
carried not one ounce of ballast; he was utterly unpractised in the world;
and at the age of twenty-six, knew just about as well how to steer his
course in it, as a romping, unsuspicious girl of thirteen: So that upon
his first setting out, the brisk gale of his spirits, as you will imagine,
ran him foul ten times in a day of somebody's tackling; and as the grave
and more slow-paced were oftenest in his way,--you may likewise imagine,
'twas with such he had generally the ill luck to get the most entangled.
For aught I know there might be some mixture of unlucky wit at the bottom
of such Fracas:--For, to speak the truth, Yorick had an invincible dislike
and opposition in his nature to gravity;--not to gravity as such;--for
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: and love exclusively. Though he had studied chemistry with such ardor
that Lavoisier commended him, he deserted science and his master for
those mistresses of fashion and good taste from whom young men take
finishing lessons in knowledge of life, and learn the usages of good
society, which in Europe forms, as it were, one family.
The intoxicating dream of social success lasted but a short time.
Balthazar left Paris, weary of a hollow existence which suited neither
his ardent soul nor his loving heart. Domestic life, so calm, so
tender, which the very name of Flanders recalled to him, seemed far
more fitted to his character and to the aspirations of his heart. No
gilded Parisian salon had effaced from his mind the harmonies of the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: man and make a gesture upward with the other; at the same time she
said something in the native with a gasping voice. Three little
boys sat beside my path, where, I must pass within three feet of
them. Wrapped in their sheets, with their shaved heads and bits of
top-knots, and queer faces, they looked like figures on a chimney-
piece. Awhile they sat their ground, solemn as judges. I came up
hand over fist, doing my five knots, like a man that meant
business; and I thought I saw a sort of a wink and gulp in the
three faces. Then one jumped up (he was the farthest off) and ran
for his mammy. The other two, trying to follow suit, got foul,
came to ground together bawling, wriggled right out of their sheets
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