| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: death he felt within him he knew well his life was drawing to a close,
and therefore he resolved to leave behind him a declaration of the
cause of his strange end. He began to write, but before he had put
down all he meant to say, his breath failed him and he yielded up
his life, a victim to the suffering which his ill-advised curiosity
had entailed upon him. The master of the house observing that it was
now late and that Anselmo did not call, determined to go in and
ascertain if his indisposition was increasing, and found him lying
on his face, his body partly in the bed, partly on the
writing-table, on which he lay with the written paper open and the pen
still in his hand. Having first called to him without receiving any
Don Quixote |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: profession in the world, I would write the famous phrase: 'Here
is your master. It is, it was, or it must be.'"
George was putting the prescription into the outside pocket of
his coat, stupidly, as if he did not know what he was doing.
"But, sir," he exclaimed, "I should have been spared!"
"Why?" inquired the other. "Because you are a man of position,
because you are rich? Look around you, sir. See these works of
art in my room. Do you imagine that such things have been
presented to me by chimney-sweeps?"
"But, Doctor," cried George, with a moan, "I have never been a
libertine. There was never any one, you understand me, never any
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: there was, methinks, a tanning principle which hardened and
consolidated the fibers of men's thoughts. Ah! already I shudder
for these comparatively degenerate days of my native village,
when you cannot collect a load of bark of good thickness, and we
no longer produce tar and turpentine.
The civilized nations--Greece, Rome, England--have been sustained
by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand.
They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human
culture! little is to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable
mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the
bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by
Walking |
