| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: compass of the ensuing year; and peremptorily fixes the month,
day, and hour of our deaths: This, I think, is sporting with
great men, and publick spirits, to the scandal of religion, and
reproach of power; and if sovereign princes and astrologers must
make diversion for the vulgar ---- why then farewel, say I, to
all governments, ecclesiastical and civil. But, I thank my better
stars, I am alive to confront this false and audacious predictor,
and to make him rue the hour he ever affronted a man of science
and resentment. The Cardinal may take what measures he pleases
with him; as his excellency is a foreigner, and a papist, he has
no reason to rely on me for his justification; I shall only
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: words out of a whirl.
"Davie," she was saying, "O, Davie, is this what you think of me! Is
it so that you were caring for poor me! O, Davie, Davie!"
With that she wept also, and our tears were commingled in a perfect
gladness.
It might have been ten in the day before I came to a clear sense of
what a mercy had befallen me; and sitting over against her, with her
hands in mine, gazed in her face, and laughed out loud for pleasure
like a child, and called her foolish and kind names. I have never seen
the place that looked so pretty as those bents by Dunkirk; and the
windmill sails, as they bobbed over the knowe, were like a tune of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: news from that quarter was the revolution of 1649; and if you have
learned the history of her crops for an average year, you never need
attend to that thing again, unless your speculations are of a merely
pecuniary character. If one may judge who rarely looks into the
newspapers, nothing new does ever happen in foreign parts, a French
revolution not excepted.
What news! how much more important to know what that is which
was never old! "Kieou-he-yu (great dignitary of the state of Wei)
sent a man to Khoung-tseu to know his news. Khoung-tseu caused the
messenger to be seated near him, and questioned him in these terms:
What is your master doing? The messenger answered with respect: My
Walden |
