| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Art of War by Sun Tzu: readiness for him on the river, wishing in case of defeat to be
the first to get across.]
(3) a hasty temper, which can be provoked by insults;
[Tu Mu tells us that Yao Hsing, when opposed in 357 A.D. by
Huang Mei, Teng Ch`iang and others shut himself up behind his
walls and refused to fight. Teng Ch`iang said: "Our adversary
is of a choleric temper and easily provoked; let us make constant
sallies and break down his walls, then he will grow angry and
come out. Once we can bring his force to battle, it is doomed to
be our prey." This plan was acted upon, Yao Hsiang came out to
fight, was lured as far as San-yuan by the enemy's pretended
The Art of War |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: and the choristers were in full voice.
The abbot began to intone the ceremony in a style of modulation impressively
exalted, his voice issuing most canonically from the roof of his mouth,
through the medium of a very musical nose newly tuned for the occasion.
But he had not proceeded far enough to exhibit all the variety and compass
of this melodious instrument, when a noise was heard at the gate, and a party
of armed men entered the chapel. The song of the choristers died away
in a shake of demisemiquavers, contrary to all the rules of psalmody.
The organ-blower, who was working his musical air-pump with one hand,
and with two fingers and a thumb of the other insinuating a peeping-place
through the curtain of the organ-gallery, was struck motionless by the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: year, so as men to walk on it, is a very signal accident, which
perhaps hath not fallen out for several hundred years before, and
is the reason why some astrologers have thought that this
prophecy could never be fulfilled, because they imagine such a
thing would never happen in our climate.
From Town of Stoffe, etc. This is a plain designation of the Duke
of Marlborough: One kind of stuff used to fatten land is called
marle, and every body knows that borough is a name for a town;
and this way of expression is after the usual dark manner of old
astrological predictions.
Then shall the Fyshe, etc. By the fish, is understood the Dauphin
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