| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: that like a purple thread runs through the texture of DORIAN GRAY;
in THE CRITIC AS ARTIST it is set forth in many colours; in THE
SOUL OF MAN it is written down, and in letters too easy to read; it
is one of the refrains whose recurring MOTIFS make SALOME so like a
piece of music and bind it together as a ballad; in the prose poem
of the man who from the bronze of the image of the 'Pleasure that
liveth for a moment' has to make the image of the 'Sorrow that
abideth for ever' it is incarnate. It could not have been
otherwise. At every single moment of one's life one is what one is
going to be no less than what one has been. Art is a symbol,
because man is a symbol.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: that the journey between the two areas was unpleasant, consisting of
crossing a hot, empty desert. "In that case," said the traveler,
"I'll just fly."
"Is that like sleep?" one of the scientists asked.
"No, no," the traveler replied. "You know, fly through the air,
like a bird."
"And what is a bird?" someone asked. And so the traveler began
to explain about flight and what an airplane was and how it flew from
one place to another. The room became very quiet, and the
expressions on the faces of everyone present darkened.
"Does he expect us to believe this?" one man whispered to another.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: the responsible director of work, and with the approval
either of the local labor inspection authorities or with that of
the local Executive Committee.
No one with the slightest knowledge of Russia will suppose
for a moment that this elaborate mechanism sprang suddenly
into existence when the decree was signed. On the contrary,
all stages of industrial conscription exist simultaneously even
today, and it would be possible by going from one part of
Russia to another to collect a series of specimens of industrial
conscription at every stage of evolution, just as one
can collect all stages of man from a baboon to a company
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