| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: spiritualised the world, and that there have been few, if any,
spiritual awakenings that have not wasted the world's faculties in
barren hopes, and fruitless aspirations, and empty or trammelling
creeds. What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress.
Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become
colourless. By its curiosity Sin increases the experience of the
race. Through its intensified assertion of individualism, it saves
us from monotony of type. In its rejection of the current notions
about morality, it is one with the higher ethics. And as for the
virtues! What are the virtues? Nature, M. Renan tells us, cares
little about chastity, and it may be that it is to the shame of the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Poor and Proud by Oliver Optic: learned that calculating economy which provides a great deal with
very small means.
Hence it was much harder for her to support herself and child,
than it would have been for one who had been brought up in a
hovel.
She had done very well, however, until, a few months before our
story opens, she had been taken sick, and was no longer able to
work. Her disease was an affection of the spine, which was at
times very painful, and confined her to the bed.
"But where is your father now?" asked Katy, when her mother had
finished the narrative.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville: navel, and beneath he had the body like a goat. And the hermit
asked him what he was. And the monster answered him, and said he
was a deadly creature, such as God had formed, and dwelt in those
deserts in purchasing his sustenance. And [he] besought the
hermit, that he would pray God for him, the which that came from
heaven for to save all mankind, and was born of a maiden and
suffered passion and death (as we well know) and by whom we live
and be. And yet is the head with the two horns of that monster at
Alexandria for a marvel.
In Egypt is the city of Heliopolis, that is to say, the city of the
Sun. In that city there is a temple, made round after the shape of
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