| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Misalliance by George Bernard Shaw: cruel!
HYPATIA. Stuff! It's only that youre tired of a great many things
Ive never tried.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. It's not alone that. Ive not forgotten the
brutality of my own boyhood. But do try to learn, glorious young
beast that you are, that age is squeamish, sentimental, fastidious.
If you cant understand my holier feelings, at least you know the
bodily infirmities of the old. You know that I darent eat all the
rich things you gobble up at every meal; that I cant bear the noise
and racket and clatter that affect you no more than they affect a
stone. Well, my soul is like that too. Spare it: be gentle with it
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: engaged, whilst in the act of throwing down some
blades from the loft, Mr. Covey entered the stable
with a long rope; and just as I was half out of the
loft, he caught hold of my legs, and was about tying
me. As soon as I found what he was up to, I gave
a sudden spring, and as I did so, he holding to my
legs, I was brought sprawling on the stable floor.
Mr. Covey seemed now to think he had me, and
could do what he pleased; but at this moment--
from whence came the spirit I don't know--I re-
solved to fight; and, suiting my action to the reso-
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: wear away the ice. I never knew it to open in the course of a
winter, not excepting that of '52-3, which gave the ponds so severe
a trial. It commonly opens about the first of April, a week or ten
days later than Flint's Pond and Fair Haven, beginning to melt on
the north side and in the shallower parts where it began to freeze.
It indicates better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress
of the season, being least affected by transient changes of
temperature. A severe cold of a few days duration in March may very
much retard the opening of the former ponds, while the temperature
of Walden increases almost uninterruptedly. A thermometer thrust
into the middle of Walden on the 6th of March, 1847, stood at 32x,
Walden |
