The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: to form a new attachment to a fresh turtle.
APOTHECARY, n. The physician's accomplice, undertaker's benefactor
and grave worm's provider.
When Jove sent blessings to all men that are,
And Mercury conveyed them in a jar,
That friend of tricksters introduced by stealth
Disease for the apothecary's health,
Whose gratitude impelled him to proclaim:
"My deadliest drug shall bear my patron's name!"
G.J.
APPEAL, v.t. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.
 The Devil's Dictionary |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: the Union, and the judicial power now remains to be examined; but
in this place I cannot conceal my fears from the reader. Their
judicial institutions exercise a great influence on the condition
of the Anglo-Americans, and they occupy a prominent place amongst
what are probably called political institutions: in this respect
they are peculiarly deserving of our attention. But I am at a
loss to explain the political action of the American tribunals
without entering into some technical details of their
constitution and their forms of proceeding; and I know not how to
descend to these minutiae without wearying the curiosity of the
reader by the natural aridity of the subject, or without risking
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: impossible to revive; and yet he had a dreamy feeling that this
child was somehow a message come to him from that far-off life: it
stirred fibres that had never been moved in Raveloe--old
quiverings of tenderness--old impressions of awe at the
presentiment of some Power presiding over his life; for his
imagination had not yet extricated itself from the sense of mystery
in the child's sudden presence, and had formed no conjectures of
ordinary natural means by which the event could have been brought
about.
But there was a cry on the hearth: the child had awaked, and Marner
stooped to lift it on his knee. It clung round his neck, and burst
 Silas Marner |