| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: chewed boats, and the sinking limbs of torn comrades, they swam out
of the white curds of the whale's direful wrath into the serene,
exasperating sunlight, that smiled on, as if at a birth or a bridal.
His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in
the eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow,
had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly
seeking with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the
whale. That captain was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly
sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had
reaped away Ahab's leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. No
turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote him with
Moby Dick |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: ways that raised my gorge; and when man-eating was referred to, and
he laughed a low, cruel laugh, part boastful, part bashful, like
one reminded of some dashing peccadillo, my repugnance was mingled
with nausea. This is no very human attitude, nor one at all
becoming in a traveller. And, seen more privately, the man
improved. Something negroid in character and face was still
displeasing; but his ugly mouth became attractive when he smiled,
his figure and bearing were certainly noble, and his eyes superb.
In his appreciation of jams and pickles, in is delight in the
reverberating mirrors of the dining cabin, and consequent endless
repetition of Moipus and Mata-Galahis, he showed himself engagingly
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: You, on the other hand, who are capable of either, ought to speak shorter
as I beg you, and then we might converse. But I see that you are
disinclined, and as I have an engagement which will prevent my staying to
hear you at greater length (for I have to be in another place), I will
depart; although I should have liked to have heard you.
Thus I spoke, and was rising from my seat, when Callias seized me by the
right hand, and in his left hand caught hold of this old cloak of mine. He
said: We cannot let you go, Socrates, for if you leave us there will be an
end of our discussions: I must therefore beg you to remain, as there is
nothing in the world that I should like better than to hear you and
Protagoras discourse. Do not deny the company this pleasure.
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