| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dreams by Olive Schreiner: "I will pour my hot life into you," said the second; "your brain is numb,
and your limbs are dead now; but they shall live with a fierce free life.
Oh, let me pour it in!"
"Oh, follow us," they cried, "and live with us. Nobler hearts than yours
have sat here in this darkness to wait, and they have come to us and we to
them; and they have never left us, never. All else is a delusion, but we
are real, we are real, we are real. Truth is a shadow; the valleys of
superstition are a farce: the earth is of ashes, the trees all rotten; but
we--feel us--we live! You cannot doubt us. Feel us how warm we are! Oh,
come to us! Come with us!"
Nearer and nearer round his head they hovered, and the cold drops melted on
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: merely criticize, calling the world vulgar and forgetting that
their criticism passes little by little into vulgarity.
I was loved, happiness was not far away, and seemed to be almost
touching me; I went on living in careless ease without trying to
understand myself, not knowing what I expected or what I wanted
from life, and time went on and on. . . . People passed by me
with their love, bright days and warm nights flashed by, the
nightingales sang, the hay smelt fragrant, and all this, sweet
and overwhelming in remembrance, passed with me as with everyone
rapidly, leaving no trace, was not prized, and vanished like
mist. . . . Where is it all?
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Master of the World by Jules Verne: passage to Lake Kirdall, but could he pierce the impenetrable
fortress of the Eyrie? No! That was beyond him!
Toward four o'clock in the afternoon, reckoning by the speed of the
"Terror" and her direction, I knew we must be approaching Buffalo;
and indeed, its outlines began to show some fifteen miles ahead.
During our passage, a few boats had been seen, but we had passed them
at a long distance, a distance which our captain could easily keep as
great as he pleased. Moreover, the "Terror" lay so low upon the
water, that at even a mile away it would have been difficult to
discover her.
Now, however, the hills encircling the end of Lake Erie, came within
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