| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: of mind and body. Unaccountable and grotesque sick fancies preyed upon
him; he would not suffer them to set his room in order, no one could
nurse him, he would not even allow them to make his bed. All his
surroundings bore the marks of this last degree of apathy, the
furniture was out of place, the daintiest trifles were covered with
dust and cobwebs. In health he had been a man of refined and expensive
tastes, now he positively delighted in the comfortless look of the
room. A host of objects required in illness--rows of medicine bottles,
empty and full, most of them dirty, crumpled linen, and broken plates,
littered the writing-table, chairs, and chimney-piece. An open
warming-pan lay on the floor before the grate; a bath, still full of
Gobseck |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the
stem of the Usher race, all time-honoured as it was, had put
forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that
the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had
always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain.
It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in
thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with
the accredited character of the people, and while speculating
upon the possible influence which the one, in the long
lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other--it was
this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: trieth to gape, but the depth will not swallow!
'Alas! where is there still a sea in which one could be drowned?' so
soundeth our plaint--across shallow swamps.
Verily, even for dying have we become too weary; now do we keep awake and
live on--in sepulchres."
Thus did Zarathustra hear a soothsayer speak; and the foreboding touched
his heart and transformed him. Sorrowfully did he go about and wearily;
and he became like unto those of whom the soothsayer had spoken.--
Verily, said he unto his disciples, a little while, and there cometh the
long twilight. Alas, how shall I preserve my light through it!
That it may not smother in this sorrowfulness! To remoter worlds shall it
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
