| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: quadrangle has necessarily a more stable basis than the equilateral
triangle, both in the whole and in the parts. Wherefore, in assigning this
figure to earth, we adhere to probability; and to water we assign that one
of the remaining forms which is the least moveable; and the most moveable
of them to fire; and to air that which is intermediate. Also we assign the
smallest body to fire, and the greatest to water, and the intermediate in
size to air; and, again, the acutest body to fire, and the next in
acuteness to, air, and the third to water. Of all these elements, that
which has the fewest bases must necessarily be the most moveable, for it
must be the acutest and most penetrating in every way, and also the
lightest as being composed of the smallest number of similar particles:
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: asked my father's pardon, and placed myself wholly in his hands - and he
has sent me to Hermiston," with a wretched smile, "for life, I suppose -
and what can I say? he strikes me as having done quite right, and let me
off better than I had deserved."
"My poor, dear boy!" observed Glenalmond. "My poor dear and, if you
will allow me to say so, very foolish boy! You are only discovering
where you are; to one of your temperament, or of mine, a painful
discovery. The world was not made for us; it was made for ten hundred
millions of men, all different from each other and from us; there's no
royal road there, we just have to sclamber and tumble. Don't think that
I am at all disposed to be surprised; don't suppose that I ever think of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: have been ready for any extravagance of conduct. Knowing the
profound silence each night brought to that nook of the country, I
could imagine them having the feeling of being the only two people
on the wide earth. A row of six or seven lofty elms just across the
road opposite the cottage made the night more obscure in that little
garden. If these two could just make out each other that was all.
"Well! And were you very much terrified?" I asked.
She made me wait a little before she said, raising her eyes: "He
was gentleness itself."
I noticed three abominable, drink-sodden loafers, sallow and dirty,
who had come to range themselves in a row within ten feet of us
Chance |
