| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: so long worn the scarlet letter. According to these
highly-respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was
dying -- conscious, also, that the reverence of the multitude
placed him already among saints and angels -- had desired, by
yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to
express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of
man's own righteousness. After exhausting life in his efforts
for mankind's spiritual good, he had made the manner of his death
a parable, in order to impress on his admirers the mighty and
mournful lesson, that, in the view of Infinite Purity, we are
sinners all alike. It was to teach them, that the holiest
The Scarlet Letter |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: existence to let you haunt my rooms in Bessborough Gardens, you
would have been much more lost. You affirm that had I been
capable of looking at you with a more perfect detachment and a
greater simplicity, I might have perceived better the inward
marvellousness which, you insist, attended your career upon that
tiny pin-point of light, hardly visible far, far below us, where
both our graves lie. No doubt! But reflect, O complaining
Shade! that this was not so much my fault as your crowning
misfortune. I believed in you in the only way it was possible
for me to believe. It was not worthy of your merits? So be it.
But you were always an unlucky man, Almayer. Nothing was ever
A Personal Record |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: to make, instead of others laughing with me, which is to the manner born of
our muse and would be all the better, I shall only be laughed at by them.
Do you expect to shoot your bolt and escape, Aristophanes? Well, perhaps
if you are very careful and bear in mind that you will be called to
account, I may be induced to let you off.
Aristophanes professed to open another vein of discourse; he had a mind to
praise Love in another way, unlike that either of Pausanias or Eryximachus.
Mankind, he said, judging by their neglect of him, have never, as I think,
at all understood the power of Love. For if they had understood him they
would surely have built noble temples and altars, and offered solemn
sacrifices in his honour; but this is not done, and most certainly ought to
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