| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw: Angel."
Fear stole upon Jane, and she became very red. "Agatha," she
said, "it was you who told me what to write. You know you did,
and you can't deny it."
"I can't deny it, can't I? I am ready to swear that I never
dictated a word to you in my life."
"Gertrude knows you did," exclaimed Jane, appalled, and almost in
tears.
"There," said Agatha, petting her as if she were a vast baby. "It
shall not be expelled, so it shan't. Have you seen the Recording
Angel lately, either of you?"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: And first, I am very sensible how much the gentlemen of wit and
pleasure are apt to murmur, and be choked at the sight of so many
daggle-tailed parsons that happen to fall in their way, and offend
their eyes; but at the same time, these wise reformers do not
consider what an advantage and felicity it is for great wits to be
always provided with objects of scorn and contempt, in order to
exercise and improve their talents, and divert their spleen from
falling on each other, or on themselves, especially when all this
may be done without the least imaginable danger to their persons.
And to urge another argument of a parallel nature: if Christianity
were once abolished, how could the Freethinkers, the strong
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: seems quite unknown. Nothing can be more captious or unfair, for
instance, than the method by which Aristotle criticised the ideal
state of Plato in his ethical works, and the passages quoted by
Polybius from Timaeus show that the latter historian fully deserved
the punning name given to him. But in Polybius there is, I think,
little of that bitterness and pettiness of spirit which
characterises most other writers, and an incidental story he tells
of his relations with one of the historians whom he criticised
shows that he was a man of great courtesy and refinement of taste -
as, indeed, befitted one who had lived always in the society of
those who were of great and noble birth.
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