| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: tenderness, as a well-meaning man, but of a low contemptible
understanding.
When I gave that free censure of the country and its inhabitants,
he made no further answer than by telling me, "that I had not
been long enough among them to form a judgment; and that the
different nations of the world had different customs;" with other
common topics to the same purpose. But, when we returned to his
palace, he asked me "how I liked the building, what absurdities I
observed, and what quarrel I had with the dress or looks of his
domestics?" This he might safely do; because every thing about
him was magnificent, regular, and polite. I answered, "that his
Gulliver's Travels |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: Ere it had time to fall, and holding it steady and high.
Strong was the fisher, brave, and swift of mind and of eye -
Strongly he threw in the clutch; but Rahero resisted the strain,
And jerked, and the spine of life snapped with a crack in twain,
And the man came slack in his hands and tumbled a lump at his feet.
One moment: and there, on the reef, where the breakers whitened and beat,
Rahero was standing alone, glowing and scorched and bare,
A victor unknown of any, raising the torch in the air.
But once he drank of his breath, and instantly set him to fish
Like a man intent upon supper at home and a savoury dish.
For what should the woman have seen? A man with a torch - and then
Ballads |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mansion by Henry van Dyke: without
a pause--Lay not up treasures upon earth where moth and rust do
corrupt
and where thieves break through and steal--that was the true
doctrine.
We may have treasures upon earth, but they must not be put into
unsafe places, but into safe places. A most comforting doctrine!
He had always followed it. Moths and rust and thieves had done
no harm
to his investments.
John Weightman's drooping eyes turned to the next verse,
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