| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor
divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a
fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared
with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it
is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
Self-emancipation even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and
imagination -- what Wilberforce is there to bring that about?
Think, also, of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions
against the last day, not to betray too green an interest in their
fates! As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called
Walden |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: slipping from him, yet he dared not refer to Clyde's wish for a
photograph. He now understood the meaning of the laugh with
which Doctor Lombard had given him leave to carry away all the
details he could remember. The picture was so dazzling, so
unexpected, so crossed with elusive and contradictory
suggestions, that the most alert observer, when placed suddenly
before it, must lose his coordinating faculty in a sense of
confused wonder. Yet how valuable to Clyde the record of such a
work would be! In some ways it seemed to be the summing up of
the master's thought, the key to his enigmatic philosophy.
The doctor had risen and was walking slowly toward the door. His
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: and the half, or again, the heavier and the lighter, the swifter and the
slower; and of hot and cold, and of any other relatives;--is not this true
of all of them?
Yes.
And does not the same principle hold in the sciences? The object of
science is knowledge (assuming that to be the true definition), but the
object of a particular science is a particular kind of knowledge; I mean,
for example, that the science of house-building is a kind of knowledge
which is defined and distinguished from other kinds and is therefore termed
architecture.
Certainly.
The Republic |
