| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: principal object of my life; but I found pleasure within the
limits of society's rules, and innocently believed myself a
profoundly moral being. The women with whom I had relations did
not belong to me alone, and I asked of them nothing but the
pleasure of the moment.
"In all this I saw nothing abnormal. On the contrary, from the
fact that I did not engage my heart, but paid in cash, I supposed
that I was honest. I avoided those women who, by attaching
themselves to me, or presenting me with a child, could bind my
future. Moreover, perhaps there may have been children or
attachments; but I so arranged matters that I could not become
The Kreutzer Sonata |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: fringed orchids, and a score of lovely flowers were all abloom. The
late spring had hindered some; the sudden heats of early summer had
hastened others; and now they seemed to come out all together, as if
Nature had suddenly tilted up her cornucopia and poured forth her
treasures in spendthrift joy.
I lay on a mossy bank at the foot of a tree, filling my pipe after a
frugal lunch, and thinking how hard it would be to find in any
quarter of the globe a place more fair and fragrant than this hidden
vale among the Alleghany Mountains. The perfume of the flowers of
the forest is more sweet and subtle than the heavy scent of tropical
blossoms. No lily-field in Bermuda could give a fragrance half so
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: "Our noisy years seem moments in the wake
Of the eternal silence."
As to the success of Silverado in its time of being, two
reports were current. According to the first, six hundred
thousand dollars were taken out of that great upright seam,
that still hung open above us on crazy wedges. Then the
ledge pinched out, and there followed, in quest of the
remainder, a great drifting and tunnelling in all directions,
and a great consequent effusion of dollars, until, all
parties being sick of the expense, the mine was deserted, and
the town decamped. According to the second version, told me
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