| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: spirit asserted itself. In all our hunting parties and adventures
in different parts of the world, Quincey Morris had always been the one
to arrange the plan of action, and Arthur and I had been accustomed to obey
him implicitly. Now, the old habit seemed to be renewed instinctively.
With a swift glance around the room, he at once laid out our plan of attack,
and without speaking a word, with a gesture, placed us each in position.
Van Helsing, Harker, and I were just behind the door, so that when it
was opened the Professor could guard it whilst we two stepped between
the incomer and the door. Godalming behind and Quincey in front
stood just out of sight ready to move in front of the window.
We waited in a suspense that made the seconds pass with nightmare slowness.
Dracula |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Iliad by Homer: at Troy, far from their homes? Go about at once among the host,
and speak fairly to them, man by man, that they draw not their
ships into the sea."
Ulysses knew the voice as that of the goddess: he flung his cloak
from him and set off to run. His servant Eurybates, a man of
Ithaca, who waited on him, took charge of the cloak, whereon
Ulysses went straight up to Agamemnon and received from him his
ancestral, imperishable staff. With this he went about among the
ships of the Achaeans.
Whenever he met a king or chieftain, he stood by him and spoke
him fairly. "Sir," said he, "this flight is cowardly and
The Iliad |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: to little debauches of melancholy which enchanted me. If I had known
the reason--perhaps quite commonplace--of this neglect, I should have
lost the unwritten poetry which intoxicated me. To me this refuge
represented the most various phases of human life, shadowed by
misfortune; sometimes the peace of the graveyard without the dead, who
speak in the language of epitaphs; one day I saw in it the home of
lepers; another, the house of the Atridae; but, above all, I found
there provincial life, with its contemplative ideas, its hour-glass
existence. I often wept there, I never laughed.
"More than once I felt involuntary terrors as I heard overhead the
dull hum of the wings of some hurrying wood-pigeon. The earth is dank;
La Grande Breteche |
