| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle: So simple were the poor boy's words, and so deep his sorrow,
that even Little John felt a certain knotty lump rise in his throat.
"I wonder not," said Robin, after a moment's silence, "that thy true
love loved thee, for thou hast surely a silver cross beneath thy tongue,
even like good Saint Francis, that could charm the birds of the air
by his speech."
"By the breath of my body," burst forth Little John, seeking to cover
his feelings with angry words, "I have a great part of a mind to go
straightway and cudgel the nasty life out of the body of that same vile
Sir Stephen. Marry, come up, say I--what a plague--does an old weazen
think that tender lasses are to be bought like pullets o' a market day?
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: off his affections as he would a debt, bestows the luxuries of wealth
but deprives the daily life of happiness,--in short, the average man
of social life is essentially incomplete, without being signally to
blame. Men of talent are as variable as barometers; genius alone is
intrinsically good.
For this reason unalloyed happiness is found at the two extremes of
the moral scale. The good-natured fool and the man of genius alone are
capable--the one through weakness, the other by strength--of that
equanimity of temper, that unvarying gentleness, which soften the
asperities of daily life. In the one, it is indifference or stolidity;
in the other, indulgence and a portion of the divine thought of which
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo: blue hills, with their background of soft, slow-moving clouds.
The smell of the fresh earth, the bursting of the buds, the
forming of new life, set him thrilling with a joy that was very
near to pain.
He stopped half way up the path and considered the advantages of
a new front to the narrow- eaved cottage, and when his foot
touched the first step of the vine-covered porch, he was far more
concerned about a new portico than with any thought of his first
sermon.
His speculations were abruptly cut short by Mandy, who bustled
out of the door with a wide smile of welcome on her black face,
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