| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: does select between two historians he chooses the one who is nearer
to the facts he describes. But he is no critic, only a
conscientious writer. It is mere vain waste to dwell on his
critical powers, for they do not exist.
In the case of Tacitus imagination has taken the place of history.
The past lives again in his pages, but through no laborious
criticism; rather through a dramatic and psychological faculty
which he specially possessed.
In the philosophy of history he has no belief. He can never make
up his mind what to believe as regards God's government of the
world. There is no method in him and none elsewhere in Roman
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's
shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his
contemplations too. See what gross inconsistency is tolerated.
I have heard some of my townsmen say, "I should like to
have them order me out to help put down an insurrection
of the slaves, or to march to Mexico--see if I would go";
and yet these very men have each, directly by their
allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money,
furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who
refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse
to sustain the unjust government which makes the war;
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: three times, as her mother and she went
218 THE SCARLET LETTER
homeward, and as often at supper-time, and while Hester was
putting her to bed, and once after she seemed to be fairly
asleep, Pearl looked up, with mischief gleaming in her black
The Scarlet Letter |
