| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: what's the use of it? You know, my business isn't distributing roofing--it's
principally keeping my competitors from distributing roofing. Same with you.
All we do is cut each other's throats and make the public pay for it!"
"Look here now, Paul! You're pretty darn near talking socialism!"
"Oh yes, of course I don't really exactly mean that--I s'pose.
Course--competition--brings out the best--survival of the fittest--but--But I
mean: Take all these fellows we know, the kind right here in the club now,
that seem to be perfectly content with their home-life and their businesses,
and that boost Zenith and the Chamber of Commerce and holler for a million
population. I bet if you could cut into their heads you'd find that one-third
of 'em are sure-enough satisfied with their wives and kids and friends and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: saying to me once, 'I have tried to make each of my workers an
artist, and when I say an artist I mean a man.' For the worker
then, handicraftsman of whatever kind he is, art is no longer to be
a purple robe woven by a slave and thrown over the whitened body of
a leprous king to hide and to adorn the sin of his luxury, but
rather the beautiful and noble expression of a life that has in it
something beautiful and noble.
And so you must seek out your workman and give him, as far as
possible, the right surroundings, for remember that the real test
and virtue of a workman is not his earnestness nor his industry
even, but his power of design merely; and that 'design is not the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: Porbus, amazed by the passionate violence with which he uttered these
words, knew not how to answer a feeling so novel and yet so profound.
Was the old man under the thraldom of an artist's fancy? Or did these
ideas flow from the unspeakable fanaticism produced at times in every
mind by the long gestation of a noble work? Was it possible to bargain
with this strange and whimsical being?
Filled with such thoughts, Porbus said to the old man, "Is it not
woman for woman? Poussin lends his mistress to your eyes."
"What sort of mistress is that?" cried Frenhofer. "She will betray him
sooner or later. Mine will be to me forever faithful."
"Well," returned Porbus, "then let us say no more. But before you
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