| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: head far back rain blow after blow upon the upturned face.
A moment later he threw the still thing from him, and,
arising, shook himself like a lion. He placed a foot
upon the carcass before him, and raised his head to give the
victory cry of his kind, but as his eyes fell upon the opening
above him leading into the temple of human sacrifice he
thought better of his intended act.
The girl, who had been half paralyzed by fear as the two
men fought, had just commenced to give thought to her
probable fate now that, though released from the clutches of
a madman, she had fallen into the hands of one whom but a
The Return of Tarzan |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: The electricians on board resolved to cut the cable before
fishing it up, and at eleven o'clock at night they had recovered
the damaged part. They made another point and spliced it,
and it was once more submerged. But some days after it broke again,
and in the depths of the ocean could not be recaptured.
The Americans, however, were not discouraged. Cyrus Field, the bold
promoter of the enterprise, as he had sunk all his own fortune,
set a new subscription on foot, which was at once answered,
and another cable was constructed on better principles.
The bundles of conducting wires were each enveloped in gutta-percha,
and protected by a wadding of hemp, contained in a metallic covering.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: There is another aspect under which some of the dialogues of Plato may be
more truly viewed:--they are dramatic sketches of an argument. We have
found that in the Lysis, Charmides, Laches, Protagoras, Meno, we arrived at
no conclusion--the different sides of the argument were personified in the
different speakers; but the victory was not distinctly attributed to any of
them, nor the truth wholly the property of any. And in the Cratylus we
have no reason to assume that Socrates is either wholly right or wholly
wrong, or that Plato, though he evidently inclines to him, had any other
aim than that of personifying, in the characters of Hermogenes, Socrates,
and Cratylus, the three theories of language which are respectively
maintained by them.
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