| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
D A 410
DAYADHVAM: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
The Waste Land |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: his ability to give false testimony with a grave face. It has
lately been suspected that gloomy Tiberius, apart from his
gloominess, may have been rather a good fellow; not so licentious
as puritanical, not cruel so much as exceptionally merciful,--a
rare general, a sagacious statesman, and popular to boot with all
his subjects save the malignant oligarchy which he consistently
snubbed, and which took revenge on him by writing his life. And,
to crown all, even Catiline, abuser of our patience, seducer of
vestal nuns, and drinker of children's blood,--whose very name
suggests murder, incest, and robbery,--even Catiline has found an
able defender in Professor Beesly. It is claimed that Catiline
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: independent self, but was wholly one with this woman at the least word
she spoke in that voice which disturbed the very sources of life in
him? If, in utter seclusion, a woman of moderate charms can, by being
constantly studied, seem supreme and imposing, perhaps one so
magnificently handsome as the Duchess could fascinate to stupidity a
youth in whom rapture found some fresh incitement; for she had really
absorbed his young soul.
Massimilla, the heiress of the Doni, of Florence, had married the
Sicilian Duke Cataneo. Her mother, since dead, had hoped, by promoting
this marriage, to leave her rich and happy, according to Florentine
custom. She had concluded that her daughter, emerging from a convent
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