| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: I was yet under the influence of Captain Giles'
mysterious earnestness. Well, it was an impulse
of some sort; an effect of that force somewhere
within our lives which shapes them this way or
that. For if these words had not escaped from my
lips (my will had nothing to do with that) my
existence would, to be sure, have been still a sea-
man's existence, but directed on now to me utterly
inconceivable lines.
No. My will had nothing to do with it. In-
deed, no sooner had I made that fateful noise
The Shadow Line |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: nights, could hold her own with the best dressed women in Paris.
Lousteau was so fatuous as to affect, among his friends, the attitude
of a man overborne, bored to extinction, ruined by Madame de la
Baudraye.
"Oh, what would I not give to the friend who would deliver me from
Dinah! But no one ever can!" said he. "She loves me enough to throw
herself out of the window if I told her."
The journalist was duly pitied; he would take precautions against
Dinah's jealousy when he accepted an invitation. And then he was
shamelessly unfaithful. Monsieur de Clagny, really in despair at
seeing Dinah in such disgraceful circumstances when she might have
The Muse of the Department |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: "we can be no worse off elsewhere than we are here."
The woman turned and led them up the narrow stairway
that ended at the door of her quarters. Tarzan was close
beside her. He saw the gold and silver bracelets upon her
bare arms, the strings of gold coin that depended from her hair
ornaments, and the gorgeous colors of her dress. He saw that
she was a Ouled-Nail, and instinctively he knew that she
was the same who had whispered the warning in his ear
earlier in the evening.
As they reached the top of the stairs they could hear the
angry crowd searching the yard beneath.
The Return of Tarzan |
