| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey: wonderful grazing ranges, Venters rode a horse that was sad proof
of his misfortunes.
Then, with his back against a stone, Venters faced the east, and,
stick in hand and idle blade, he waited. The glorious sunlight
filled the valley with purple fire. Before him, to left, to
right, waving, rolling, sinking, rising, like low swells of a
purple sea, stretched the sage. Out of the grove of cottonwoods,
a green patch on the purple, gleamed the dull red of Jane
Withersteen's old stone house. And from there extended the wide
green of the village gardens and orchards marked by the graceful
poplars; and farther down shone the deep, dark richness of the
Riders of the Purple Sage |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: ALCIBIADES: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: It is subject, as we were saying?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then that is not the principle which we are seeking?
ALCIBIADES: It would seem not.
SOCRATES: But may we say that the union of the two rules over the body,
and consequently that this is man?
ALCIBIADES: Very likely.
SOCRATES: The most unlikely of all things; for if one of the members is
subject, the two united cannot possibly rule.
ALCIBIADES: True.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne:
To observe and define his character, however, under such
disadvantages, was as difficult a task as to trace out and build
up anew, in imagination, an old fortress, like Ticonderoga, from
a view of its grey and broken ruins. Here and there, perchance,
the walls may remain almost complete; but elsewhere may be only a
shapeless mound, cumbrous with its very strength, and overgrown,
through long years of peace and neglect, with grass and alien
weeds.
The Scarlet Letter |
