| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: waters. She looked modest to me. I imagined her diffident, lying
very quiet, with her side nestling shyly against the wharf to which
she was made fast with very new lines, intimidated by the company
of her tried and experienced sisters already familiar with all the
violences of the ocean and the exacting love of men. They had had
more long voyages to make their names in than she had known weeks
of carefully tended life, for a new ship receives as much attention
as if she were a young bride. Even crabbed old dock-masters look
at her with benevolent eyes. In her shyness at the threshold of a
laborious and uncertain life, where so much is expected of a ship,
she could not have been better heartened and comforted, had she
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: wounds.
Such, at least, was the story that men whispered to each other.
Certain it was that the old King, when on his deathbed, whether
moved by remorse for his great sin, or merely desiring that the
kingdom should not pass away from his line, had had the lad sent
for, and, in the presence of the Council, had acknowledged him as
his heir.
And it seems that from the very first moment of his recognition he
had shown signs of that strange passion for beauty that was
destined to have so great an influence over his life. Those who
accompanied him to the suite of rooms set apart for his service,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: flight with me; but after six months of happiness she wished only to
die with me, and received several thrusts. I was entangled in a great
cloak that they flung over me, carried down to a gondola, and hurried
to the Pozzi dungeons. I was twenty-two years old. I gripped the hilt
of my broken sword so hard, that they could only have taken it from me
by cutting off my hand at the wrist. A curious chance, or rather the
instinct of self-preservation, led me to hide the fragment of the
blade in a corner of my cell, as if it might still be of use. They
tended me; none of my wounds were serious. At two-and-twenty one can
recover from anything. I was to lose my head on the scaffold. I
shammed illness to gain time. It seemed to me that the canal lay just
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