| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: repeated with mechanical obstinacy while she sat, her head bowed
down as if afraid to look at her father.
To him it seemed of the utmost importance that he should assure
her of his intention of never forgiving. He was convinced that
his faith in her had been the foundation of his hopes, the motive
of his courage, of his determination to live and struggle, and to
be victorious for her sake. And now his faith was gone,
destroyed by her own hands; destroyed cruelly, treacherously, in
the dark; in the very moment of success. In the utter wreck of
his affections and of all his feelings, in the chaotic disorder
of his thoughts, above the confused sensation of physical pain
Almayer's Folly |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: Jacques (that was his name) was sitting in my cabin one stormy
dog-watch below, after bringing me a book to read from his own
travelling store.
"Not at all," he answered with his courteous intonation and a
faint smile. As I pulled a drawer open his suddenly aroused
curiosity gave him a watchful expression. I wonder what he
expected to see. A poem, maybe. All that's beyond guessing now.
He was not a cold but a calm man, still more subdued by disease--
a man of few words and of an unassuming modesty in general
intercourse, but with something uncommon in the whole of his
person which set him apart from the undistinguished lot of our
Some Reminiscences |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: beginning of the eighteenth century. He was the Sir Charles Easy
and the Lovelace of his day and country--renowned for the number
of duels he had fought, and the successful intrigues which he had
carried on. The supremacy which he had attained in the
fashionable world was absolute; and when we combine it with one
or two anecdotes, for which, "if laws were made for every
degree," he ought certainly to have been hanged, the popularity
of such a person really serves to show, either that the present
times are much more decent, if not more virtuous, than they
formerly were, or that high-breeding then was of more difficult
attainment than that which is now so called, and consequently
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