| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: seizing his hat, he fled from his place of business like a
madman. Three streets away he stopped and groaned. 'Lord! I
should have borrowed from the manager!' he cried. 'But it's too
late now; it would look dicky to go back; I'm penniless--simply
penniless--like the unemployed.'
He went home and sat in the dismantled dining-room with his head
in his hands. Newton never thought harder than this victim of
circumstances, and yet no clearness came. 'It may be a defect in
my intelligence,' he cried, rising to his feet, 'but I cannot see
that I am fairly used. The bad luck I've had is a thing to write
to The Times about; it's enough to breed a revolution. And the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: imprisonment, have been beyond power and description; one who has
really assisted me, though she does not know it, to bear the burden
of my troubles more than any one else in the whole world has, and
all through the mere fact of her existence, through her being what
she is - partly an ideal and partly an influence: a suggestion of
what one might become as well as a real help towards becoming it; a
soul that renders the common air sweet, and makes what is spiritual
seem as simple and natural as sunlight or the sea: one for whom
beauty and sorrow walk hand in hand, and have the same message. On
the occasion of which I am thinking I recall distinctly how I said
to her that there was enough suffering in one narrow London lane to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: year, that he should finish or not finish his great
allegorical picture, are questions of little interest to the
world. The ranks of life are full; and although a thousand
fall, there are always some to go into the breach. When they
told Joan of Arc she should be at home minding women's work,
she answered there were plenty to spin and wash. And so, even
with your own rare gifts! When nature is "so careless of the
single life," why should we coddle ourselves into the fancy
that our own is of exceptional importance? Suppose
Shakespeare had been knocked on the head some dark night in
Sir Thomas Lucy's preserves, the world would have wagged on
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