| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: as well as body, began to vanish away; and the bodies of those who had died
by violence, in a few moments underwent a parallel change and disappeared.
In that cycle of existence there was no such thing as the procreation of
animals from one another, but they were born of the earth, and of this our
ancestors, who came into being immediately after the end of the last cycle
and at the beginning of this, have preserved the recollection. Such
traditions are often now unduly discredited, and yet they may be proved by
internal evidence. For observe how consistent the narrative is; as the old
returned to youth, so the dead returned to life; the wheel of their
existence having been reversed, they rose again from the earth: a few only
were reserved by God for another destiny. Such was the origin of the
Statesman |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: beast of a man that ever he met in all of his life.
That time in the harbor he had seen Sir John Malyoe at a distance
and in the darkness; now that he beheld him near by it seemed to
him that he had never looked at a more evil face in all his life.
Not that the man was altogether ugly, for he had a good nose and
a fine double chin; but his eyes stood out like balls and were
red and watery, and he winked them continually, as though they
were always smarting; and his lips were thick and purple-red, and
his fat, red cheeks were mottled here and there with little clots
of purple veins; and when he spoke his voice rattled so in his
throat that it made one wish to clear one's own throat to listen
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: indistinct because of a golden haze; everything must have become
warmer and more glowing, and because of the lengthening of the
shadows more manifestly in relief. The shadows of the tall
churches grew longer and longer, until they touched the horizon
and mingled in the universal shadow; and then, slow, and soft,
and wrapping the world in fold after fold of deepening blue, came
the night--the night at first obscurely simple, and then with
faint points here and there, and then jewelled in darkling
splendour with a hundred thousand lights. Out of that mingling of
darkness and ambiguous glares the noise of an unceasing activity
would have arisen, the louder and plainer now because there was
The Last War: A World Set Free |
