| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: eyes. And I see a bay, a wide bay, smooth as glass and
polished like ice, shimmering in the dark. A red light
burns far off upon the gloom of the land, and the night
is soft and warm. We drag at the oars with aching arms,
and suddenly a puff of wind, a puff faint and tepid and
laden with strange odors of blossoms, of aromatic wood,
comes out of the still night--the first sigh of the East on
my face. That I can never forget. It was impalpable
and enslaving, like a charm, like a whispered promise of
mysterious delight.
"We had been pulling this finishing spell for eleven
Youth |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: his chief business in this world; and talk, which is the harmonious
speech of two or more, is by far the most accessible of pleasures.
It costs nothing in money; it is all profit; it completes our
education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed
at any age and in almost any state of health.
The spice of life is battle; the friendliest relations are still a
kind of contest; and if we would not forego all that is valuable in
our lot, we must continually face some other person, eye to eye,
and wrestle a fall whether in love or enmity. It is still by force
of body, or power of character or intellect, that we attain to
worthy pleasures. Men and women contend for each other in the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: had sneezed. The which caused all the company to laugh, and even
Cornelius himself. When the vine-grower went to take the crowns he
felt such a commotion in his cheeks that his old scummer face let
little laughs exude from its pores like smoke pouring out of a
chimney, and he could say nothing. Then it was the turn of the
jeweller, who was a little bit of a bantering fellow, and whose lips
were as tightly squeezed as the neck of a hanged man. He seized a
handful of the crowns, looked at the others, even the king, and said,
with a jeering air, "Baisez mon cul."
"Is it dirty?" asked the vine-dresser.
"Look and see," replied the jeweller, gravely.
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
