| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: rude and spontaneous homage to death, which they
had so lately rendered to beauty---the slow chant
and mournful step of the priests brought back to
their remembrance such of their comrades as had
fallen in the yesterday's array. But such recollections
dwell not long with those who lead a life of
danger and enterprise, and ere the sound of the
death-hymn had died on the wind, the outlaws
were again busied in the distribution of their spoil.
``Valiant knight,'' said Locksley to the Black
Champion, ``without whose good heart and mighty
Ivanhoe |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: flowing lines closing the view.
In this valley down to Brenzett and Colebrook
and up to Darnford, the market town fourteen
miles away, lies the practice of my friend Kennedy.
He had begun life as surgeon in the Navy, and
afterwards had been the companion of a famous
traveller, in the days when there were continents
with unexplored interiors. His papers on the
fauna and flora made him known to scientific socie-
ties. And now he had come to a country practice
--from choice. The penetrating power of his
Amy Foster |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: mistaken.
SOCRATES: So it seems to me. But perhaps we may consider the matter
thus:--
ALCIBIADES: How?
SOCRATES: I will tell you. We think that some are sick; do we not?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And must every sick person either have the gout, or be in a
fever, or suffer from ophthalmia? Or do you believe that a man may labour
under some other disease, even although he has none of these complaints?
Surely, they are not the only maladies which exist?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly not.
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