| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: candle, but all the apartment was visible, even to the portraits on
the wall: the splendid head of Mrs. Linton, and the graceful one
of her husband. Heathcliff advanced to the hearth. Time had
little altered his person either. There was the same man: his
dark face rather sallower and more composed, his frame a stone or
two heavier, perhaps, and no other difference. Catherine had risen
with an impulse to dash out, when she saw him.
'Stop!' he said, arresting her by the arm. 'No more runnings away!
Where would you go? I'm come to fetch you home; and I hope you'll
be a dutiful daughter and not encourage my son to further
disobedience. I was embarrassed how to punish him when I
Wuthering Heights |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: "In what way?"
"I have maintained that which in me lay/"
"How so?"
"I have never, secretly or openly, done a wrong unto any."
XLIX
In what character dost thou now come forward?
As a witness summoned by God. "Come thou," saith God, "and
testify for me, for thou art worthy of being brought forward as a
witness by Me. Is aught that is outside thy will either good or
bad? Do I hurt any man? Have I placed the good of each in the
power of any other than himself? What witness dost thou bear to
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: the mother from the depths of her long easy-chair bewailed the
lost glories of Amsterdam, where she had been brought up, and of
her position as the daughter of a cigar dealer there.
Almayer had left his home with a light heart and a lighter
pocket, speaking English well, and strong in arithmetic; ready to
conquer the world, never doubting that he would.
After those twenty years, standing in the close and stifling heat
of a Bornean evening, he recalled with pleasurable regret the
image of Hudig's lofty and cool warehouses with their long and
straight avenues of gin cases and bales of Manchester goods; the
big door swinging noiselessly; the dim light of the place, so
Almayer's Folly |
