| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Adventure by Jack London: to shut his eyes and let go, and that he would die, sink into
immensity of rest. He knew it; it was very simple. All he had to
do was close his eyes and let go; for he had reached the stage
where he lived by will alone. His weary body seemed torn by the
oncoming pangs of dissolution. He was a fool to hang on. He had
died a score of deaths already, and what was the use of prolonging
it to two-score deaths before he really died. Not only was he not
afraid to die, but he desired to die. His weary flesh and weary
spirit desired it, and why should the flame of him not go utterly
out?
But his mind that could will life or death, still pulsed on. He
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: Magnan, he closed this door, slipped the iron bars into their places
and ran the bolts. The landlord's room, where the two young surgeons
were to sleep, adjoined the public room, and was separated by a
somewhat thin partition from the kitchen, where the landlord and his
wife intended, probably, to pass the night. The servant-woman had left
the premises to find a lodging in some crib or hayloft. It is
therefore easy to see that the kitchen, the landlord's chamber, and
the public room were, to some extent, isolated from the rest of the
house. In the courtyard were two large dogs, whose deep-toned barking
showed vigilant and easily roused guardians.
"What silence! and what a beautiful night!" said Wilhelm, looking at
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: apprehension -- as it would never be a measure of policy to turn
out so quiet an individual as myself; and it being hardly in the
nature of a public officer to resign -- it was my chief trouble,
therefore, that I was likely to grow grey and decrepit in the
Surveyorship, and become much such another animal as the old
Inspector. Might it not, in the tedious lapse of official life
that lay before me, finally be with me as it was with this
venerable friend -- to make the dinner-hour the nucleus of the
day, and to spend the rest of it, as an old dog spends it, asleep
in
The Scarlet Letter |
