| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: walking through the streets. It is a unique centre of thought and religion--
the intellectual and spiritual granary of this country. All that silence
and absence of goings-on is the stillness of infinite motion--the sleep of
the spinning-top, to borrow the simile of a well-known writer."
"Oh, well, it med be all that, or it med not. As I say,
I didn't see nothing of it the hour or two I was there;
so I went in and had a pot o' beer, and a penny loaf,
and a ha'porth o' cheese, and waited till it was time
to come along home. You've j'ined a college by this time,
I suppose?"
"Ah, no!" said Jude. "I am almost as far off that as ever."
Jude the Obscure |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: the wrath of unlearned but patriotic Swiss, especially of
those of the cicerone class, this conclusion is forced upon us
as soon as we begin to study the legend in accordance with the
canons of modern historical criticism. It is useless to point
to Tell's lime-tree, standing to-day in the centre of the
market-place at Altdorf, or to quote for our confusion his
crossbow preserved in the arsenal at Zurich, as unimpeachable
witnesses to the truth of the story. It is in vain that we are
told, "The bricks are alive to this day to testify to it;
therefore, deny it not." These proofs are not more valid than
the handkerchief of St. Veronica, or the fragments of the true
Myths and Myth-Makers |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: rage on the flags of the gateway.
The words produced a great sensation among the spectators, who were
standing at a little distance from Monsieur Sanson. He, too, was still
standing, his back against the large stove in the middle of the
vaulted hall, awaiting the order to crop the felon's hair and erect
the scaffold on the Place de Greve.
On re-entering the yard, Jacques Collin went towards his chums at a
pace suited to a frequenter of the galleys.
"What have you on your mind?" said he to la Pouraille.
"My game is up," said the man, whom Jacques Collin led into a corner.
"What I want now is a pal I can trust."
|
