| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: and True, of which madness is perhaps the earthly type.
Such was the ruin to which she had brought the man, once -- nay,
why should we not speak it? -- still so passionately loved!
Hester felt that the sacrifice of the clergyman's good name, and
death itself, as she had already told Roger Chillingworth, would
have been infinitely preferable to the alternative which she had
taken upon herself to choose. And now, rather than have had this
grievous wrong to confess, she would gladly have laid down on the
forest leaves, and died there, at Arthur Dimmesdale's feet
The Scarlet Letter |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: attended at different times by seven doctors.
YOKE, n. An implement, madam, to whose Latin name, _jugum_, we owe
one of the most illuminating words in our language -- a word that
defines the matrimonial situation with precision, point and poignancy.
A thousand apologies for withholding it.
YOUTH, n. The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum,
Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of
endowing a living Homer.
Youth is the true Saturnian Reign, the Golden Age on earth
again, when figs are grown on thistles, and pigs betailed with
whistles and, wearing silken bristles, live ever in clover, and
The Devil's Dictionary |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: to me." And that was the only mention she ever made of it; yet
I know that she was thankful and that only reserve prevented her
from referring to what, to say the least, was an embarrassing
situation, however unavoidable.
Shortly after daylight we saw smoke apparently coming straight
toward us, and after a time we made out the squat lines of a
tug--one of those fearless exponents of England's supremacy of
the sea that tows sailing ships into French and English ports.
I stood up on a thwart and waved my soggy coat above my head.
Nobs stood upon another and barked. The girl sat at my feet
straining her eyes toward the deck of the oncoming boat.
The Land that Time Forgot |
