| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: "You certainly interest me. If this isn't boring you, go on."
"I notice that when you want to stay over an extra day from
college you go about it in a sure way. You never decide at first
while the merits of going or staying are fairly clear in your
mind. You let your imagination shinny on the side of your desires
for a few hours, and then you decide. Naturally your imagination,
after a little freedom, thinks up a million reasons why you
should stay, so your decision when it comes isn't true. It's
biassed."
"Yes," objected Amory, "but isn't it lack of will-power to let my
imagination shinny on the wrong side?"
This Side of Paradise |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy: to fight a duel was a little short of an enormity. In his mind he
vaguely pondered whether he should strike that long-legged Englishman
in the face and call him a coward, or whether such conduct in a lady's
presence might be deemed ungentlemanly, when Marguerite happily interposed.
"I pray you, Lord Tony," she said in that gentle, sweet,
musical voice of hers, "I pray you play the peacemaker. The child is
bursting with rage, and," she added with a SOUPCON of dry sarcasm,
"might do Sir Percy an injury." She laughed a mocking little laugh,
which, however, did not in the least disturb her husband's placid
equanimity. "The British turkey has had the day," she said.
"Sir Percy would provoke all the saints in the calendar and keep
The Scarlet Pimpernel |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: and most humiliating period in their lives. They both alike tried
in later life to blot out from their memories all the monstrous,
shameful incidents of that morbid period, when both were rarely
in a normal frame of mind, both were rarely quite themselves.
It was only in the third month of their married life, after their
return from Moscow, where they had been staying for a month, that
their life began to go more smoothly.
Chapter 15
They had just come back from Moscow, and were glad to be alone.
He was sitting at the writing-table in his study, writing. She,
wearing the dark lilac dress she had worn during the first days
Anna Karenina |
