| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not
private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker
enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when
it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in
which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only--when
fences shall be multiplied, and man-traps and other engines
invented to confine men to the PUBLIC road, and walking over the
surface of God's earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on
some gentleman's grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is
commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let
us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come.
Walking |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: "I bear you no grudge, my child," Bartolommeo went on.
The words were full of kindness, but they hurt Don Juan; he could
not pardon this heart-searching goodness on his father's part.
"What a remorseful memory for me!" he cried, hypocritically.
"Poor Juanino," the dying man went on, in a smothered voice, "I
have always been so kind to you, that you could not surely desire
my death?"
"Oh, if it were only possible to keep you here by giving up a
part of my own life!" cried Don Juan.
("We can always SAY this sort of thing," the spendthrift thought;
"it is as if I laid the whole world at my mistress' feet.")
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: solemn noise of its passage, which is to me dreadful. I have
always feared the sound of wind beyond everything. In my
hell it would always blow a gale.
I have been all day correcting proofs, and making out a new
plan for our house. The other was too dear to be built now,
and it was a hard task to make a smaller house that would
suffice for the present, and not be a mere waste of money in
the future. I believe I have succeeded; I have taken care of
my study anyway.
Two favours I want to ask of you. First, I wish you to get
'Pioneering in New Guinea,' by J. Chalmers. It's a
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