| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: dab at your fine sayings in the first place--and in the next, I cannot for
my soul set a grave face upon a bad matter, and tell the world--'tis the
refuge of the unfortunate--the enfranchisement of the prisoner--the downy
lap of the hopeless, the weary, and the broken-hearted; nor could I set out
with a lye in my mouth, by affirming, that of all the soft and delicious
functions of our nature, by which the great Author of it, in his bounty,
has been pleased to recompence the sufferings wherewith his justice and his
good pleasure has wearied us--that this is the chiefest (I know pleasures
worth ten of it); or what a happiness it is to man, when the anxieties and
passions of the day are over, and he lies down upon his back, that his soul
shall be so seated within him, that whichever way she turns her eyes, the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: abruptly between New Zealand and the Horn, let his soul rest in
some Paradise of true seamen, where no amount of carrying on will
ever dismast a ship!
XIII.
There has been a time when a ship's chief mate, pocket-book in hand
and pencil behind his ear, kept one eye aloft upon his riggers and
the other down the hatchway on the stevedores, and watched the
disposition of his ship's cargo, knowing that even before she
started he was already doing his best to secure for her an easy and
quick passage.
The hurry of the times, the loading and discharging organization of
The Mirror of the Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: bered to throw his shoulders back, hold his chin
high, and swing out his right leg more freely. At
such times he almost swaggered, he became fairly
insolent with his new sense of freedom. He felt
himself the equal if not the peer of all creation.
Whenever a carriage or a motor-car passed him on the
country road he assumed, with the skill of an actor,
the air of a business man hastening to an important
engagement. However, always his mind was work-
ing over a hard problem. He knew that his store of
money was scanty, that it would not last long even
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