| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: was so sudden that he could not help shuddering. He turned cold
as he came towards the bed; the lamp flared in a sudden vehement
gust of wind and lighted up his father's face; the features were
wasted and distorted; the skin that cleaved to their bony
outlines had taken wan livid hues, all the more ghastly by force
of contrast with the white pillows on which he lay. The muscles
about the toothless mouth had contracted with pain and drawn
apart the lips; the moans that issued between them with appalling
energy found an accompaniment in the howling of the storm
without.
In spite of every sign of coming dissolution, the most striking
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Koran: paid what it has earned, and they shall not be wronged.
O ye who believe! if ye engage to one another in a debt for a stated
time, then write it down, and let a scribe write it down between you
faithfully; nor let a scribe refuse to write as God taught him, but
let him write, and let him who owes dictate; but let him fear God
his Lord, and not diminish therefrom aught; but if he who owes be a
fool, or weak, or cannot dictate himself, then let his agent dictate
faithfully, and let them call two witnesses out from amongst their
men; or if there be not two men, then a man and two women, from
those whom he chooses for witnesses, so that if one of the two
should err, the second of the two may remind the other; and let not
The Koran |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: mysterious in its immateriality. Some such pleasure must be theirs
who have thrown their thoughts into the hearts of men, and seen them
spread in waves of feeling, whose sphere time widens through the
world. For like the mobile water is the mind of man,--quick to
catch emotions, quick to transmit them. Of all waves of feeling,
this is not the least true of religious ones, that, starting from
their birthplace, pass out to stir others, who have but humanity in
common with those who professed them first. Like the ripples in the
pool, they leave their initial converts to sink back again into
comparative quiescence, as they advance to throw into sudden tremors
hordes of outer barbarians. In both of the great religions in
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