| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: and columns of the church rolled asunder, and disappeared; and
the front of the mirror reflected nothing save the blazing
torches and the melancholy apparatus placed on the altar or table
before it.
The doctor led the ladies, who greatly required his support, into
the apartment from whence they came, where wine, essences, and
other means of restoring suspended animation, had been provided
during his absence. He motioned them to chairs, which they
occupied in silence--Lady Forester, in particular, wringing her
hands, and casting her eyes up to heaven, but without speaking a
word, as if the spell had been still before her eyes.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: admit that my failure proved my view to be a wrong one,
or that my success would have made it a right one;
though that's how we appraise such attempts nowadays--I mean,
not by their essential soundness, but by their accidental outcomes.
If I had ended by becoming like one of these gentlemen in red
and black that we saw dropping in here by now, everybody would
have said: 'See how wise that young man was, to follow the bent
of his nature!' But having ended no better than I began they say:
'See what a fool that fellow was in following a freak of
his fancy!'
"However it was my poverty and not my will that consented to be beaten.
Jude the Obscure |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: If true be told me, any from this depth
Has found his upward way, I answer thee,
Nor fear lest infamy record the words.
"A man of arms at first, I cloth'd me then
In good Saint Francis' girdle, hoping so
T' have made amends. And certainly my hope
Had fail'd not, but that he, whom curses light on,
The' high priest again seduc'd me into sin.
And how and wherefore listen while I tell.
Long as this spirit mov'd the bones and pulp
My mother gave me, less my deeds bespake
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
