| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad: thrown away the substance for the shadow. Of the
gratification of wealth he did not know enough to excite
his imagination with any visions of luxury. How could
he--the child of a drunken boiler-maker--going
straight from the workshop into the engine-room of a
north-country collier! But the notion of the absolute
idleness of wealth he could very well conceive. He
reveled in it, to forget his present troubles; he imagined
himself walking about the streets of Hull (he knew their
gutters well as a boy) with his pockets full of sov-
ereigns. He would buy himself a house; his married
End of the Tether |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: idle. I noted a little while ago that you have there, in the
corner, one of those monstrous constructions which your fellow-
countrymen carry with them into all quarters of the globe - in a
word, a Saratoga trunk. Until this moment I have never been able
to conceive the utility of these erections; but then I began to
have a glimmer. Whether it was for convenience in the slave trade,
or to obviate the results of too ready an employment of the bowie-
knife, I cannot bring myself to decide. But one thing I see
plainly - the object of such a box is to contain a human body.
"Surely," cried Silas, "surely this is not a time for jesting."
"Although I may express myself with some degree of pleasantry,"
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: feelings.
"25th.
"My dear Soul, all is well. To my other conquests I have just
added an invaluable one: I have done a service to one of the most
influential men who work the elections. Like the critics, who make
other men's reputations but can never make their own, he makes
deputies though he never can become one. The worthy man wanted to
show his gratitude without loosening his purse-strings by saying
to me, 'Would you care to sit in the Chamber? I can get you
returned as deputy.'
" 'If I ever make up my mind to enter on a political career,'
Albert Savarus |
