| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: This is true both in general and in detail. Courtesy increases, as
we travel eastward round the world, coincidently with a decrease in
the sense of self. Asia is more courteous than Europe, Europe than
America. Particular races show the same concomitance of
characteristics. France, the most impersonal nation of Europe, is at
the same time the most polite.
Considered a priori, the connection between the two is not far to
seek. Impersonality, by lessening the interest in one's self,
induces one to take an interest in others. Introspection tends to
make of man a solitary animal, the absence of it a social one.
The more impersonal the people, the more will the community supplant
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: place a second shot.
In answer to the report of the rifle I had the satisfaction of
seeing the brute spring into the air, turning a complete
somersault; but it was up again almost instantly, though in the
brief second that it took it to scramble to its feet and get
its bearings, it exposed its left side fully toward me, and a
second bullet went crashing through its heart. Down it went
for the second time--and then up and at me. The vitality of
these creatures of Caspak is one of the marvelous features of
this strange world and bespeaks the low nervous organization of
the old paleolithic life which has been so long extinct in
The People That Time Forgot |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: puckered her pretty mouth. On the forehead, which was well modelled,
an observer would have noticed a roundness characteristic of the true
Parisian woman,--self-willed, merry, well-informed, but inaccessible
to vulgar seductions. Her hands, which were almost transparent, were
hanging down at the end of each arm of her chair; the tapering
fingers, slightly turned up at their points, showed nails like
almonds, which caught the light. Adam smiled at his wife's impatience,
and looked at her with a glance which two years of married life had
not yet chilled. Already the little countess had made herself mistress
of the situation, for she scarcely paid attention to her husband's
admiration. In fact, in the look which she occasionally cast at him,
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