| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: Farewell. A famous shove this to end a good passage with; and yet,
somehow, one could not muster upon one's lips the smile of a
courtier's gratitude. This favour was dispensed to you from under
an overbearing scowl, which is the true expression of the great
autocrat when he has made up his mind to give a battering to some
ships and to hunt certain others home in one breath of cruelty and
benevolence, equally distracting.
"No, sir. Can't see very far."
Thus would the mate's voice repeat the thought of the master, both
gazing ahead, while under their feet the ship rushes at some twelve
knots in the direction of the lee shore; and only a couple of miles
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde: a firework in her life, so the King had given orders that the Royal
Pyrotechnist should be in attendance on the day of her marriage.
"What are fireworks like?" she had asked the Prince, one morning,
as she was walking on the terrace.
"They are like the Aurora Borealis," said the King, who always
answered questions that were addressed to other people, "only much
more natural. I prefer them to stars myself, as you always know
when they are going to appear, and they are as delightful as my own
flute-playing. You must certainly see them."
So at the end of the King's garden a great stand had been set up,
and as soon as the Royal Pyrotechnist had put everything in its
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: some Christian ship that might take me in: and if the worst came to
the worst, I could but die, which would put an end to all these
miseries at once. Pray note, all this was the fruit of a disturbed
mind, an impatient temper, made desperate, as it were, by the long
continuance of my troubles, and the disappointments I had met in
the wreck I had been on board of, and where I had been so near
obtaining what I so earnestly longed for - somebody to speak to,
and to learn some knowledge from them of the place where I was, and
of the probable means of my deliverance. I was agitated wholly by
these thoughts; all my calm of mind, in my resignation to
Providence, and waiting the issue of the dispositions of Heaven,
Robinson Crusoe |
