| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: postulants, scribes, gooroos, precentors, beadles, fakeers, sextons,
reverences, revivalists, cenobites, perpetual curates, chaplains,
mudjoes, readers, novices, vicars, pastors, rabbis, ulemas, lamas,
sacristans, vergers, dervises, lectors, church wardens, cardinals,
prioresses, suffragans, acolytes, rectors, cures, sophis, mutifs and
pumpums.
INFLUENCE, n. In politics, a visionary _quo_ given in exchange for a
substantial _quid_.
INFALAPSARIAN, n. One who ventures to believe that Adam need not have
sinned unless he had a mind to -- in opposition to the
Supralapsarians, who hold that that luckless person's fall was decreed
The Devil's Dictionary |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lost Princess of Oz by L. Frank Baum: the Wizard.
"But what good would that do?" asked Dorothy. "If I got across, it
wouldn't help the rest of you, and I couldn't go alone among all those
giants and dragons while you stayed here."
"True enough," agreed the Wizard sadly. And then, after looking
around the group, he inquired, "What is that on your finger, Trot?"
"A ring. The Mermaids gave it to me," she explained, "and if ever I'm
in trouble when I'm on the water, I can call the Mermaids and they'll
come and help me. But the Mermaids can't help me on the land, you
know, 'cause they swim, and--and--they haven't any legs."
"True enough," repeated the Wizard, more sadly.
The Lost Princess of Oz |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: eye."
Dick was not a whit staggered by my argument, which he contended
was founded on misrepresentation. "Description," he said, "was
to the author of a romance exactly what drawing and tinting were
to a painter: words were his colours, and, if properly employed,
they could not fail to place the scene which he wished to conjure
up as effectually before the mind's eye as the tablet or canvas
presents it to the bodily organ. The same rules," he contended,
"applied to both, and an exuberance of dialogue, in the former
case, was a verbose and laborious mode of composition which went
to confound the proper art of fictitious narrative with that of
The Bride of Lammermoor |
