| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: to begin an argument.
`Why, because there's nobody with me!' cried Humpty Dumpty.
`Did you think I didn't know the answer to THAT? Ask another.'
`Don't you think you'd be safer down on the ground?' Alice went
on, not with any idea of making another riddle, but simply in her
good-natured anxiety for the queer creature. `That wall is so
VERY narrow!'
`What tremendously easy riddles you ask!' Humpty Dumpty growled
out. `Of course I don't think so! Why, if ever I DID fall off--
which there's no chance of--but IF I did--' Here he pursed
his lips and looked so solemn and grand that Alice could hardly
Through the Looking-Glass |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: originally divine, and, however desecrated, still to be held
sacred by a brother; with what awful fear he had deprecated the
success of his pursuit, and prayed that the Unpardonable Sin
might never be revealed to him. Then ensued that vast
intellectual development, which, in its progress, disturbed the
counterpoise between his mind and heart. The Idea that possessed
his life had operated as a means of education; it had gone on
cultivating his powers to the highest point of which they were
susceptible; it had raised him from the level of an unlettered
laborer to stand on a star-lit eminence, whither the philosophers
of the earth, laden with the lore of universities, might vainly
The Snow Image |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: of Weavers. When the great city revolted under Charles V., who tried
to suppress its privileges, the head of the Claes family was so deeply
compromised in the rebellion that, foreseeing a catastrophe and bound
to share the fate of his associates, he secretly sent wife, children,
and property to France before the Emperor invested the town. The
syndic's forebodings were justified. Together with other burghers who
were excluded from the capitulation, he was hanged as a rebel, though
he was, in reality, the defender of the liberties of Ghent.
The death of Claes and his associates bore fruit. Their needless
execution cost the King of Spain the greater part of his possessions
in the Netherlands. Of all the seed sown in the earth, the blood of
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