Today's Stichomancy for Stanley Kubrick

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar:

conspexit, ad haec constitit, ne in quaerendis suis pugnandi tempus dimitteret.

Instructo exercitu magis ut loci natura [delectusque collis] et necessitas temporis quam ut rei militaris ratio atque ordo postulabat, cum diversae legiones aliae alia in parte hostibus resisterent saepibusque densissimis, ut ante demonstravimus, interiectis prospectus impediretur, neque certa subsidia conlocari neque quid in quaque parte opus esset provideri neque ab uno omnia imperia administrari poterant. Itaque in tanta rerum iniquitate fortunae quoque eventus varii sequebantur.

Legionis VIIII. et X. milites, ut in sinistra parte aciei constiterant, pilis emissis cursu ac lassitudine exanimatos vulneribusque

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw:

THE MAN. _[sitting up as majestically as his ignominious posture allows]_ Woman: you have struck WILLIAM SHAKESPEAR.

QUEEN ELIZABETH. _[stupent]_ Marry, come up!!! Struck William Shakespear quotha! And who in the name of all the sluts and jades and light-o'-loves and fly-by-nights that infest this palace of mine, may William Shakespear be?

THE DARK LADY. Madam: he is but a player. Oh, I could have my hand cut off--

QUEEN ELIZABETH. Belike you will, mistress. Have you bethought you that I am like to have your head cut off as well?

THE DARK LADY. Will: save me. Oh, save me.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad:

All at once my strained, yearning stare distinguished a white object floating within a yard of the ship's side. White on the black water. A phosphorescent flash passed under it. What was that thing? . . . I recognized my own floppy hat. It must have fallen off his head . . . and he didn't bother. Now I had what I wanted--the saving mark for my eyes. But I hardly thought of my other self, now gone from the ship, to be hidden forever from all friendly faces, to be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, with no brand of the curse on his sane forehead to stay a slaying hand . . . too proud to explain.

And I watched the hat--the expression of my sudden pity for his mere flesh.

The Secret Sharer

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 Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton:

their wedding day. But they were generally accompanied by a sense of compunction and self-abasement of which Newland Archer felt no trace. He could not deplore (as Thackeray's heroes so often exasperated him by doing) that he had not a blank page to offer his bride in exchange for the unblemished one she was to give to him. He could not get away from the fact that if he had been brought up as she had they would have been no more fit to find their way about than the Babes in the Wood; nor could he, for all his anxious cogitations, see any honest reason (any, that is, unconnected