| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: and hoped to find in sleep that remission of distress which nature
seldom denies. Ordering myself, therefore, to be undressed, I
observed that the women looked very earnestly upon me, not
expecting, I suppose, to see me so submissively attended. When my
upper vest was taken off, they were apparently struck with the
splendour of my clothes, and one of them timorously laid her hand
upon the embroidery. She then went out, and in a short time came
back with another woman, who seemed to be of higher rank and
greater authority. She did, at her entrance, the usual act of
reverence, and, taking me by the hand placed me in a smaller tent,
spread with finer carpets, where I spent the night quietly with my
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton: Attending of his trembling quill.
Already were the eves possess
With the swift pilgrim's daubed nest;
The groves already did rejoice
In Philomel's triumphing voice:
The showers were short, the weather mild,
The morning fresh, the evening smil'd.
Joan takes her neat-rubb'd pail, and now,
She trips to milk the sand-red cow;
Where, for some sturdy foot-ball swain,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: and he feels, if he is to be thus tenderly weaned from the
passion of life, thus gradually inducted into the slumber of
death, that when at last the end comes, it will come quietly
and fitly. If anything is to reconcile poor spirits to the
coming of the last enemy, surely it should be such a mild
approach as this; not to hale us forth with violence, but to
persuade us from a place we have no further pleasure in. It
is not so much, indeed, death that approaches as life that
withdraws and withers up from round about him. He has
outlived his own usefulness, and almost his own enjoyment; and
if there is to be no recovery; if never again will he be young
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