| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: points in which species differ from other species of the same genus, are
called specific characters; and as these specific characters have varied
and come to differ within the period of the branching off of the species
from a common progenitor, it is probable that they should still often be in
some degree variable,--at least more variable than those parts of the
organisation which have for a very long period remained constant.
In connexion with the present subject, I will make only two other remarks.
I think it will be admitted, without my entering on details, that secondary
sexual characters are very variable; I think it also will be admitted that
species of the same group differ from each other more widely in their
secondary sexual characters, than in other parts of their organisation;
On the Origin of Species |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Upon the golden margent of the strand,
And like a lingering lover oft returned
To kiss those pallid limbs which once with intense fire burned,
Ere the wet seas had quenched that holocaust,
That self-fed flame, that passionate lustihead,
Ere grisly death with chill and nipping frost
Had withered up those lilies white and red
Which, while the boy would through the forest range,
Answered each other in a sweet antiphonal counter-change.
And when at dawn the wood-nymphs, hand-in-hand,
Threaded the bosky dell, their satyr spied
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: You're self-satisfied unduly.
Of things in college I'm denied
A knowledge -- you of all beside."
Borelli
ILLUMINATI, n. A sect of Spanish heretics of the latter part of the
sixteenth century; so called because they were light weights --
_cunctationes illuminati_.
ILLUSTRIOUS, adj. Suitably placed for the shafts of malice, envy and
detraction.
IMAGINATION, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint
ownership.
The Devil's Dictionary |
