| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: countries, except the most uncivilized, as upon the invention of
substitutes for water. To hold that this general aversion to that
liquid has no basis in the preservative instinct of the race is to be
unscientific -- and without science we are as the snakes and toads.
POVERTY, n. A file provided for the teeth of the rats of reform. The
number of plans for its abolition equals that of the reformers who
suffer from it, plus that of the philosophers who know nothing about
it. Its victims are distinguished by possession of all the virtues
and by their faith in leaders seeking to conduct them into a
prosperity where they believe these to be unknown.
PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf
The Devil's Dictionary |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: about my clearing; the tantivy of wild pigeons, flying by two and
threes athwart my view, or perching restless on the white pine
boughs behind my house, gives a voice to the air; a fish hawk
dimples the glassy surface of the pond and brings up a fish; a mink
steals out of the marsh before my door and seizes a frog by the
shore; the sedge is bending under the weight of the reed-birds
flitting hither and thither; and for the last half-hour I have heard
the rattle of railroad cars, now dying away and then reviving like
the beat of a partridge, conveying travellers from Boston to the
country. For I did not live so out of the world as that boy who, as
I hear, was put out to a farmer in the east part of the town, but
Walden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: demanded sulkily. "You nearly broke your neck gettin' away the
other time. And I haven't got the old key. It's lost."
"Where's it lost?" I demanded, with another gesture toward his
coat collar.
"Down the elevator shaft." There was a gleam of indignant
satisfaction through his tears of rage and humiliation.
And so, while he hunted the key in the debris at the bottom of the
shaft, I quieted his prisoners with the assurance that the lock had
slipped, and that they would be free as lords as soon as we could
find the janitor with a pass-key. Stuart went down finally and
discovered Blobs, with the key in his pocket, telling the engineer
The Man in Lower Ten |
