| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: what he lacks in himself, beauty, lightness of heart,
imagination, music. The Rhine maidens, representing all these to
him, fill him with hope and longing; and he never considers that
he has nothing to offer that they could possibly desire, being
by natural limitation incapable of seeing anything from anyone
else's point of view. With perfect simplicity, he offers himself
as a sweetheart to them. But they are thoughtless, elemental,
only half real things, much like modern young ladies. That the
poor dwarf is repulsive to their sense of physical beauty and
their romantic conception of heroism, that he is ugly and
awkward, greedy and ridiculous, disposes for them of his claim to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie: "What was it?"
"Locked up in the desk in the boudoir, they found a will of Mrs.
Inglethorp's, dated before her marriage, leaving her fortune to
Alfred Inglethorp. It must have been made just at the time they
were engaged. It came quite as a surprise to Wells-- and to John
Cavendish also. It was written on one of those printed will
forms, and witnessed by two of the servants--not Dorcas."
"Did Mr. Inglethorp know of it?"
"He says not."
"One might take that with a grain of salt," I remarked
sceptically. "All these wills are very confusing. Tell me, how
The Mysterious Affair at Styles |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: already all but in actual hostilities against them. The people readily
consenting to the motion, and voting an aid and succor for them, he
dispatched Lacedaemonius, Cimon's son, having only ten ships with him,
as it were out of a design to affront him; for there was a great
kindness and friendship betwixt Cimon's family and the Lacedaemonians;
so, in order that Lacedaemonius might lie the more open to a charge, or
suspicion at least, of favoring the Lacedaemonians and playing false, if
he performed no considerable exploit in this service, he allowed him a
small number of ships, and sent him out against his will; and indeed he
made it somewhat his business to hinder Cimon's sons from rising in the
state, professing that by their very names they were not to be looked
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