| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: I shudder to reflect on it.
Some hours passed thus; but by degrees, as the sun declined towards
the horizon, the wind died away into a gentle breeze and the sea
became free from breakers. But these gave place to a heavy swell;
I felt sick and hardly able to hold the rudder, when suddenly I saw
a line of high land towards the south.
Almost spent, as I was, by fatigue and the dreadful suspense I
endured for several hours, this sudden certainty of life rushed
like a flood of warm joy to my heart, and tears gushed from my eyes.
How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love
we have of life even in the excess of misery! I constructed
Frankenstein |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: feet, much after the manner of a kangaroo.
They were rapidly disappearing when it occurred to me
to follow them, and so, hurling caution to the winds, I sprang
across the meadow in their wake with leaps and bounds even
more prodigious than their own, for the muscles of an
athletic Earth man produce remarkable results when pitted
against the lesser gravity and air pressure of Mars.
Their way led directly towards the apparent source of the
river at the base of the cliffs, and as I neared this point I
found the meadow dotted with huge boulders that the ravages
of time had evidently dislodged from the towering crags above.
The Gods of Mars |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: when I came back--a nice woman in the tobacco trade--very fond of me--
but the trade was restricted, as we say. She had been settled
there a good many years by a friend; but there was a son too much
in the case. Josh and I never hit it off. However, I made the most
of the position, and I've always taken my glass in good company.
It's been all on the square with me; I'm as open as the day.
You won't take it ill of me that I didn't look you up before.
I've got a complaint that makes me a little dilatory. I thought you were
trading and praying away in London still, and didn't find you there.
But you see I was sent to you, Nick--perhaps for a blessing to both
of us."
Middlemarch |
