| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: my sorrows to the Father of nature. I pause--feeling forcibly all
the emotions I am describing; and (reminded, as I register my
sorrows, of the sublime calm I have felt, when in some tremendous
solitude, my soul rested on itself, and seemed to fill the universe)
I insensibly breathe soft, hushing every wayward emotion, as if
fearing to sully with a sigh, a contentment so extatic.
"Having settled my father's affairs, and, by my exertions in
his favour, made my brother my sworn foe, I returned to London.
My husband's conduct was now changed; I had during my absence,
received several affectionate, penitential letters from him; and
he seemed on my arrival, to wish by his behaviour to prove his
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Conjoined also must their nature be.
If one, moreover, denies that body feel,
And holds that soul, through all the body mixed,
Takes on this motion which we title "sense,"
He battles in vain indubitable facts:
For who'll explain what body's feeling is,
Except by what the public fact itself
Has given and taught us? "But when soul is parted,
Body's without all sense." True!- loses what
Was even in its life-time not its own;
And much beside it loses, when soul's driven
 Of The Nature of Things |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Animal Farm by George Orwell: natural span. For myself I do not grumble, for I am one of the lucky ones.
I am twelve years old and have had over four hundred children. Such is the
natural life of a pig. But no animal escapes the cruel knife in the end.
You young porkers who are sitting in front of me, every one of you will
scream your lives out at the block within a year. To that horror we all
must come--cows, pigs, hens, sheep, everyone. Even the horses and the dogs
have no better fate. You, Boxer, the very day that those great muscles of
yours lose their power, Jones will sell you to the knacker, who will cut
your throat and boil you down for the foxhounds. As for the dogs, when
they grow old and toothless, Jones ties a brick round their necks and
drowns them in the nearest pond.
 Animal Farm |