| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Animal Farm by George Orwell: ended. Boxer refused to take even a day off work, and made it a point of
honour not to let it be seen that he was in pain. In the evenings he would
admit privately to Clover that the hoof troubled him a great deal. Clover
treated the hoof with poultices of herbs which she prepared by chewing
them, and both she and Benjamin urged Boxer to work less hard. "A horse's
lungs do not last for ever," she said to him. But Boxer would not listen.
He had, he said, only one real ambition left--to see the windmill well
under way before he reached the age for retirement.
At the beginning, when the laws of Animal Farm were first formulated,
the retiring age had been fixed for horses and pigs at twelve, for cows at
fourteen, for dogs at nine, for sheep at seven, and for hens and geese at
Animal Farm |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: Certain nocturnal wading birds produce these silhouettes among
the marshes.
A glance capable of piercing all that mist deeply would have
perceived at some distance a sort of little sutler's wagon
with a fluted wicker hood, harnessed to a famished nag which was
cropping the grass across its bit as it halted, hidden, as it were,
behind the hovel which adjoins the highway to Nivelles,
at the angle of the road from Mont-Saint-Jean to Braine l'Alleud;
and in the wagon, a sort of woman seated on coffers and packages.
Perhaps there was some connection between that wagon and that prowler.
The darkness was serene. Not a cloud in the zenith. What matters it
Les Miserables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John of Damascus: under the guilt of denial. Then he straightway remembered the
Lord's words, and went out and wept bitterly, and with those hot
tears made good his defeat, and transferred the victory to his
own side. Like a skilful man of war, though fallen, he was not
undone, nor did he despair, but, springing to his feet, he
brought up, as a reserve, bitter tears from the agony of his
soul; and straightway, when the enemy saw that sight, like a man
whose eyes are scorched with a fierce flame, he leaped off and
fled afar, howling horribly. So the chief became chief again, as
he had before been chosen teacher of the whole world, being now
become its pattern of penitence. And after his holy resurrection
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