| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: life except as "the real truth about you," and she had in fact a
wonderful way of making it seem, as such, the secret of her own
life too. That was in fine how he so constantly felt her as
allowing for him; he couldn't on the whole call it anything else.
He allowed for himself, but she, exactly, allowed still more;
partly because, better placed for a sight of the matter, she traced
his unhappy perversion through reaches of its course into which he
could scarce follow it. He knew how he felt, but, besides knowing
that, she knew how he looked as well; he knew each of the things of
importance he was insidiously kept from doing, but she could add up
the amount they made, understand how much, with a lighter weight on
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: affairs has thrust into conspicuous station, where, while the
world stands gazing at them, the dreary consciousness of
imbecility makes them curse their birth hour. To such men, we
give for a companion him whose rare talents, which perhaps
require a Revolution for their exercise, are buried in the tomb
of sluggish circumstances.
Not far from these, we must find room for one whose success has
been of the wrong kind; the man who should have lingered in the
cloisters of a university, digging new treasures out of the
Herculaneum of antique lore, diffusing depth and accuracy of
literature throughout his country, and thus making for himself a
Mosses From An Old Manse |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which
morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the
highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its
details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and
critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry
information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how
this might be done.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to
front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn
what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I
had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is
Walden |
