| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: peaceful silence, which all his companions are candid
enough to consider as proceeding not from inability
to speak, but willingness to hear.
Many, without being able to attain any general
character of excellence, have some single art of
entertainment which serves them as a passport through
the world. One I have known for fifteen years the
darling of a weekly club, because every night,
precisely at eleven, he begins his favourite song, and
during the vocal performance, by corresponding
motions of his hand, chalks out a giant upon the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: If I suggested any improvement in his mode of life, he merely
answered, without expressing any regret, that it was too late. Yet
he thoroughly believed in honesty and the like virtues.
There was a certain positive originality, however slight, to be
detected in him, and I occasionally observed that he was thinking
for himself and expressing his own opinion, a phenomenon so rare
that I would any day walk ten miles to observe it, and it amounted
to the re-origination of many of the institutions of society.
Though he hesitated, and perhaps failed to express himself
distinctly, he always had a presentable thought behind. Yet his
thinking was so primitive and immersed in his animal life, that,
Walden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: "Oh, do you really think so? Lots of folks jolly me for
trying to get up shows and so on. I tell them they have more
artistic gifts than they know. Just yesterday I was saying
to Harry Haydock: if he would read poetry, like Longfellow,
or if he would join the band--I get so much pleasure out of
playing the cornet, and our band-leader, Del Snafflin, is such
a good musician, I often say he ought to give up his barbering
and become a professional musician, he could play the clarinet
in Minneapolis or New York or anywhere, but--but I couldn't
get Harry to see it at all and--I hear you and the doctor went
out hunting yesterday. Lovely country, isn't it. And did you
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