| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: how a point could be disputable; because reason taught us to
affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our
knowledge we cannot do either. So that controversies,
wranglings, disputes, and positiveness, in false or dubious
propositions, are evils unknown among the HOUYHNHNMS. In the
like manner, when I used to explain to him our several systems of
natural philosophy, he would laugh, "that a creature pretending
to reason, should value itself upon the knowledge of other
people's conjectures, and in things where that knowledge, if it
were certain, could be of no use." Wherein he agreed entirely
with the sentiments of Socrates, as Plato delivers them; which I
Gulliver's Travels |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: The howling desert miles around,
The tinkling brook the only sound -
Wearied with all his toils and feats,
The traveller dines on potted meats;
On potted meats and princely wines,
Not wisely but too well he dines.
The brindled Tiger loud may roar,
High may the hovering Vulture soar;
Alas! regardless of them all,
Soon shall the empurpled glutton sprawl -
Soon, in the desert's hushed repose,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: moment when these hands will meet my eyes, when that imagination
will haunt my thoughts no more.
"Fear not that I shall be the instrument of future mischief.
My work is nearly complete. Neither yours nor any man's death
is needed to consummate the series of my being and accomplish
that which must be done, but it requires my own. Do not think that
I shall be slow to perform this sacrifice. I shall quit your vessel
on the ice raft which brought me thither and shall seek the most
northern extremity of the globe; I shall collect my funeral pile
and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its remains may
afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch who would
Frankenstein |
