| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: Now and then the people wondered why nothing was heard of the raider,
or of the stolen knife or the other plunder, but nobody was able
to throw any light on that matter. Nearly a week had drifted by,
and still the thing remained a vexed mystery.
On Sunday Constable Blake and Pudd'nhead Wilson met on the street,
and Tom Driscoll joined them in time to open their conversation for them.
He said to Blake: "You are not looking well, Blake; you seem to be
annoyed about something. Has anything gone wrong in the
detective business? I believe you fairly and justifiably claim
to have a pretty good reputation in that line, isn't it so?"--
which made Blake feel good, and look it; but Tom added,
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: about such matters, we do not examine or analyze the painting; all that is
required is a sort of indistinct and deceptive mode of shadowing them
forth. But when a person endeavours to paint the human form we are quick
at finding out defects, and our familiar knowledge makes us severe judges
of any one who does not render every point of similarity. And we may
observe the same thing to happen in discourse; we are satisfied with a
picture of divine and heavenly things which has very little likeness to
them; but we are more precise in our criticism of mortal and human things.
Wherefore if at the moment of speaking I cannot suitably express my
meaning, you must excuse me, considering that to form approved likenesses
of human things is the reverse of easy. This is what I want to suggest to
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: Tore through my entrails, that, with fear and pain
Distorted, all my nether shape thus grew
Transformed: but he my inbred enemy
Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart,
Made to destroy. I fled, and cried out Death!
Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed
From all her caves, and back resounded Death!
I fled; but he pursued (though more, it seems,
Inflamed with lust than rage), and, swifter far,
Me overtook, his mother, all dismayed,
And, in embraces forcible and foul
Paradise Lost |
