| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: Almost as white as wax, with the marks and signs in her face as
numerous and as fine as if they had been etched by a needle, with
soft white draperies relieved by a faded green scarf on the
delicate tone of which the years had further refined, she was the
picture of a serene and exquisite but impenetrable sphinx, whose
head, or indeed all whose person, might have been powdered with
silver. She was a sphinx, yet with her white petals and green
fronds she might have been a lily too--only an artificial lily,
wonderfully imitated and constantly kept, without dust or stain,
though not exempt from a slight droop and a complexity of faint
creases, under some clear glass bell. The perfection of household
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: Conceals not from us, naming thee the tree
Of knowledge, knowledge both of good and evil;
Forbids us then to taste! but his forbidding
Commends thee more, while it infers the good
By thee communicated, and our want:
For good unknown sure is not had; or, had
And yet unknown, is as not had at all.
In plain then, what forbids he but to know,
Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise?
Such prohibitions bind not. But, if death
Bind us with after-bands, what profits then
Paradise Lost |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: his role. Meantime he was ready to prove that he was the best guide
on the Grande Decharge.
And so he was. There was not a man in all the Lake St. John country
who knew the woods and waters as well as he did. Far up the great
rivers Peribonca and Misstassini he had pushed his birch canoe,
exploring the network of lakes and streams along the desolate Height
of Land. He knew the Grand Brule, where the bears roam in September
on the fire-scarred hills among the wide, unharvested fields of
blueberries. He knew the hidden ponds and slow-creeping little
rivers where the beavers build their dams, and raise their silent
water-cities, like Venice lost in the woods. He knew the vast
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