| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Anabasis by Xenophon: pupil of Socrates. He marched with the Spartans,
and was exiled from Athens. Sparta gave him land
and property in Scillus, where he lived for many
years before having to move once more, to settle
in Corinth. He died in 354 B.C.
The Anabasis is his story of the march to Persia
to aid Cyrus, who enlisted Greek help to try and
take the throne from Artaxerxes, and the ensuing
return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
March 399 B.C.
Anabasis |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: headlong motion! I felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of
an imminent smash. As I put on pace, night followed day like the
flapping of a black wing. The dim suggestion of the laboratory
seemed presently to fall away from me, and I saw the sun hopping
swiftly across the sky, leaping it every minute, and every minute
marking a day. I supposed the laboratory had been destroyed and
I had come into the open air. I had a dim impression of
scaffolding, but I was already going too fast to be conscious of
any moving things. The slowest snail that ever crawled dashed by
too fast for me. The twinkling succession of darkness and light
was excessively painful to the eye. Then, in the intermittent
The Time Machine |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: his servant (he thought that Maurice was really attached to him, but
the man was entirely in the Countess' interest)--'What! Maurice!' and
the dying man suddenly sat upright in his bed, and seemed to recover
all his presence of mind, 'I have sent for my attorney seven or eight
times during the last fortnight, and he does not come!' he cried. 'Do
you imagine that I am to be trifled with? Go for him, at once, this
very instant, and bring him back with you. If you do not carry out my
orders, I shall get up and go myself.'
" 'Madame,' said the man as he came into the salon, 'you heard M. le
Comte; what ought I to do?'
" 'Pretend to go to the attorney, and when you come back tell your
Gobseck |
