| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: The Hell within him; for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step, no more than from himself, can fly
By change of place: Now conscience wakes despair,
That slumbered; wakes the bitter memory
Of what he was, what is, and what must be
Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue.
Sometimes towards Eden, which now in his view
Lay pleasant, his grieved look he fixes sad;
Sometimes towards Heaven, and the full-blazing sun,
Which now sat high in his meridian tower:
Paradise Lost |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fantastic Fables by Ambrose Bierce: through the forest of shins, "but I know tolerably well how to
diagnose a volcano."
The Bellamy and the Members
THE Members of a body of Socialists rose in insurrection against
their Bellamy.
"Why," said they, "should we be all the time tucking you out with
food when you do nothing to tuck us out?"
So, resolving to take no further action, they went away, and
looking backward had the satisfaction to see the Bellamy compelled
to sell his own book.
OLD SAWS WITH NEW TEETH
Fantastic Fables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: did and Galen and Aristotle? Did he guide a whole school towards
new worlds? No. Though it is impossible to deny that this
persistent observer of human chemistry possessed that antique
science of the Mages, that is to say, knowledge of the elements
in fusion, the causes of life, life antecedent to life, and what
it must be in its incubation or ever it IS, it must be confessed
that, unfortunately, everything in him was purely personal.
Isolated during his life by his egoism, that egoism is now
suicidal of his glory. On his tomb there is no proclaiming statue
to repeat to posterity the mysteries which genius seeks out at
its own cost.
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