| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: vigour, which no man could be so foolish to hope, however
extravagant he may be in his wishes. That the question therefore
was not, whether a man would choose to be always in the prime of
youth, attended with prosperity and health; but how he would pass
a perpetual life under all the usual disadvantages which old age
brings along with it. For although few men will avow their
desires of being immortal, upon such hard conditions, yet in the
two kingdoms before mentioned, of Balnibarbi and Japan, he
observed that every man desired to put off death some time
longer, let it approach ever so late: and he rarely heard of any
man who died willingly, except he were incited by the extremity
Gulliver's Travels |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: home, with the sun shining low under the edge of a bank of clouds
that had been pouring floods of water into the mud-soaked street.
There was a rainbow in the sky, and another in his breast--for he
had thirty-six hours' rest before him, and a chance to see his
family. Then suddenly he came in sight of the house, and noticed
that there was a crowd before the door. He ran up the steps and
pushed his way in, and saw Aniele's kitchen crowded with excited
women. It reminded him so vividly of the time when he had come
home from jail and found Ona dying, that his heart almost stood
still. "What's the matter?" he cried.
A dead silence had fallen in the room, and he saw that every one
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: Helen's figure. As they went, Mr. Flushing called after them,
"We must start in an hour. Hewet, please remember that. An hour."
Whether made by man, or for some reason preserved by nature,
there was a wide pathway striking through the forest at right
angles to the river. It resembled a drive in an English forest,
save that tropical bushes with their sword-like leaves grew at
the side, and the ground was covered with an unmarked springy
moss instead of grass, starred with little yellow flowers.
As they passed into the depths of the forest the light grew dimmer,
and the noises of the ordinary world were replaced by those creaking
and sighing sounds which suggest to the traveller in a forest that he
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