| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare: Who bids them still consort with ugly night,
And never wound the heart with looks again;
Who, like a king perplexed in his throne,
By their suggestion gives a deadly groan, 1044
Whereat each tributary subject quakes;
As when the wind, imprison'd in the ground,
Struggling for passage, earth's foundation shakes,
Which with cold terror doth men's minds confound.
This mutiny each part doth so surprise l049
That from their dark beds once more leap her eyes;
And, being open'd, threw unwilling light
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela: finding a single stale tortilla, a solitary rotten pepper, or
one pinch of salt with which to flavor the horrible taste
of dry meat. The owners of the huts, their peaceful
brethren, were impassive with the stonelike impassivity
of Aztec idols; others, more human, with a slow smile on
their colorless lips and beardless faces, watched these
fierce men who less than a month ago had made the
miserable huts of others tremble with fear, now in their
turn fleeing their own huts where the ovens were cold
and the water tanks dry, fleeing with their tails between
their legs, cringing, like curs kicked out of their own
The Underdogs |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: of self-interest.
Nevertheless, Charles was a true child of Paris, taught by the customs
of society and by Annette herself to calculate everything; already an
old man under the mask of youth. He had gone through the frightful
education of social life, of that world where in one evening more
crimes are committed in thought and speech than justice ever punishes
at the assizes; where jests and clever sayings assassinate the noblest
ideas; where no one is counted strong unless his mind sees clear: and
to see clear in that world is to believe in nothing, neither in
feelings, nor in men, nor even in events,--for events are falsified.
There, to "see clear" we must weigh a friend's purse daily, learn how
Eugenie Grandet |
