| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: hatchets, and sticks were seized; but the obstacle which had stayed
Salammbo stayed them. How could the veil be taken back? The mere sight
of it was a crime; it was of the nature of the gods, and contact with
it was death.
The despairing priests wrung their hands on the peristyles of the
temples. The guards of the Legion galloped about at random; the people
climbed upon the houses, the terraces, the shoulders of the
colossuses, and the masts of the ships. He went on, nevertheless, and
the rage, and the terror also, increased at each of his steps; the
streets cleared at his approach, and the torrent of flying men
streamed on both sides up to the tops of the walls. Everywhere he
Salammbo |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: they can, with a very little more trouble, enter by the mouth. Bearing
such facts in mind, I can see no reason to doubt that an accidental
deviation in the size and form of the body, or in the curvature and length
of the proboscis, &c., far too slight to be appreciated by us, might profit
a bee or other insect, so that an individual so characterised would be able
to obtain its food more quickly, and so have a better chance of living and
leaving descendants. Its descendants would probably inherit a tendency to
a similar slight deviation of structure. The tubes of the corollas of the
common red and incarnate clovers (Trifolium pratense and incarnatum) do not
on a hasty glance appear to differ in length; yet the hive-bee can easily
suck the nectar out of the incarnate clover, but not out of the common red
On the Origin of Species |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: '"Pardon me, Miss Murray," said he, "I have loved you so intensely
- I do still adore you so deeply, that I would not willingly offend
you; but though I never have loved, and never CAN love any woman as
I have loved you, it is equally certain that I never was so ill-
treated by any. On the contrary, I have always found your sex the
kindest and most tender and obliging of God's creation, till now."
(Think of the conceited fellow saying that!) "And the novelty and
harshness of the lesson you have taught me to-day, and the
bitterness of being disappointed in the only quarter on which the
happiness of my life depended, must excuse any appearance of
asperity. If my presence is disagreeable to you, Miss Murray," he
Agnes Grey |
