The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: "I can think of nothing," Lingard declared, unexpectedly. "I only
know that your voice was friendly; and for the rest--"
"One must get through a night like this somehow," said d'Alcacer.
"The very stars seem to lag on their way. It's a common belief
that a drowning man is irresistibly compelled to review his past
experience. Just now I feel quite out of my depth, and whatever I
have said has come from my experience. I am sure you will forgive
me. All that it amounts to is this: that it is natural for us to
cry for the moon but it would be very fatal to have our cries
heard. For what could any one of us do with the moon if it were
given to him? I am speaking now of us--common mortals."
The Rescue |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: the furniture being of the simplest kind. But when he saw the girl's
beauty and great qualities, when he had known inexpressible and
unlooked-for happiness with her, he began to dote upon her; and longed
to adorn his idol. Then Aquilina's toilette was so comically out of
keeping with her poor abode, that for both their sakes it was clearly
incumbent on him to move. The change swallowed up almost all
Castanier's savings, for he furnished his domestic paradise with all
the prodigality that is lavished on a kept mistress. A pretty woman
must have everything pretty about her; the unity of charm in the woman
and her surroundings singles her out from among her sex. This
sentiment of homogeneity indeed, though it has frequently escaped the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: Envoys
I To Willie and Henrietta
II To My Mother
III To Auntie
IV To Minnie
V To My Name-Child
VI To Any Reader
A Child's Garden of Verses
I
Bed in Summer
In winter I get up at night
A Child's Garden of Verses |