| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: supposed that it possessed none of those forms or qualities which are so
debated in the schools, nor in general anything the knowledge of which is
not so natural to our minds that no one can so much as imagine himself
ignorant of it. Besides, I have pointed out what are the laws of nature;
and, with no other principle upon which to found my reasonings except the
infinite perfection of God, I endeavored to demonstrate all those about
which there could be any room for doubt, and to prove that they are such,
that even if God had created more worlds, there could have been none in
which these laws were not observed. Thereafter, I showed how the greatest
part of the matter of this chaos must, in accordance with these laws,
dispose and arrange itself in such a way as to present the appearance of
Reason Discourse |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: the young soldier, the colonel in his second campaign, for the heart
hot with love and glory that set a letter from Nais above Imperial
favor. The pain of those days cast a veil of sadness over her face, a
shadow that only vanished at the terrible age when a woman first
discovers with dismay that the best years of her life are over, and
she has had no joy of them; when she sees her roses wither, and the
longing for love is revived again with the desire to linger yet for a
little on the last smiles of youth. Her nobler qualities dealt so many
wounds to her soul at the moment when the cold of the provinces seized
upon her. She would have died of grief like the ermine if by chance
she had been sullied by contact with those men whose thoughts are bent
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Jane of her safety. He removed his hunting knife from its
sheath and handed it to her hilt first, again motioning her
into the bower.
The girl understood, and taking the long knife she entered
and lay down upon the soft grasses while Tarzan of the Apes
stretched himself upon the ground across the entrance.
And thus the rising sun found them in the morning.
When Jane awoke, she did not at first recall the strange
events of the preceding day, and so she wondered at her odd
surroundings--the little leafy bower, the soft grasses of her
bed, the unfamiliar prospect from the opening at her feet.
Tarzan of the Apes |
