Today's Stichomancy for Ray Bradbury

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare:

The Marshals Sister Had her share too, as I remember, Cosen, Else there be tales abroade; you'l pledge her?

PALAMON.

Yes.

ARCITE.

A pretty broune wench t'is. There was a time When yong men went a hunting, and a wood, And a broade Beech: and thereby hangs a tale:--heigh ho!

PALAMON.

For Emily, upon my life! Foole,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx:

earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

The Communist Manifesto

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde:

usual history of a man and a woman as it usually happens, as it always happens. And the ending is the ordinary ending. The woman suffers. The man goes free.

GERALD. I don't know if that is the ordinary ending, mother: I hope it is not. But your life, at any rate, shall not end like that. The man shall make whatever reparation is possible. It is not enough. It does not wipe out the past, I know that. But at least it makes the future better, better for you, mother.

MRS. ARBUTHNOT. I refuse to marry Lord Illingworth.

GERALD. If he came to you himself and asked you to be his wife you would give him a different answer. Remember, he is my father.

The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

By the hand she led him and placed him in front of her husband "Father," she said, "how often have we, when talking together, Thought of that joyful day in the future, when Hermann, selecting After long waiting his bride at length would make us both happy! All kinds of projects we form'd. designing first one, then another Girl as his wife, as we talk'd in the manner that parents delight in. Now the day has arrived; and now has his bride been conducted Hither and shown him by Heaven; his heart at length has decided. Were we not always saying that he should choose for himself, and Were you not lately wishing that he might feel for a maiden Warm and heart-felt emotions? And now has arrived the right moment!