| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: longed to be with them, but certainly without the smallest suspicion
of his possessing the shadow of a right to introduce himself.
If he had but asked who the party were! The name of Musgrove would
have told him enough. "Well, it would serve to cure him of
an absurd practice of never asking a question at an inn,
which he had adopted, when quite a young man, on the principal
of its being very ungenteel to be curious.
"The notions of a young man of one or two and twenty," said he,
"as to what is necessary in manners to make him quite the thing,
are more absurd, I believe, than those of any other set of beings
in the world. The folly of the means they often employ
Persuasion |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: father,' returned Morris.
'Fiddlestick,' said Michael. 'My father is my father; but Joseph
is just as much my uncle as he's yours; and you have no right to
sequestrate his person.'
'I do no such thing,' said Morris doggedly. 'He is not well, he
is dangerously ill and nobody can see him.'
'I'll tell you what, then,' said Michael. 'I'll make a clean
breast of it. I have come down like the opossum, Morris; I have
come to compromise.'
Poor Morris turned as pale as death, and then a flush of wrath
against the injustice of man's destiny dyed his very temples.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: A whole minute passed, and then she made a step forward.
There was a low jingle, a glint of yellow metal, a sway of
fringed draperies, and she stopped as if her heart had failed her.
The young fellow by my side growled. The pilgrims murmured
at my back. She looked at us all as if her life had depended
upon the unswerving steadiness of her glance. Suddenly she
opened her bared arms and threw them up rigid above her head,
as though in an uncontrollable desire to touch the sky, and at
the same time the swift shadows darted out on the earth, swept around
on the river, gathering the steamer into a shadowy embrace.
A formidable silence hung over the scene.
Heart of Darkness |
