| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: The hazel copse is quite on the other side. Now we have only to
follow the road."
They dragged themselves onward, turned into the lane, passed the
track to Little Hintock, and so reached the park.
"Here I turn back," said Grace, in the same passionless voice.
"You are quite near home."
Mrs. Charmond stood inert, seeming appalled by her late admission.
"I have told you something in a moment of irresistible desire to
unburden my soul which all but a fool would have kept silent as
the grave," she said. "I cannot help it now. Is it to be a
secret--or do you mean war?"
The Woodlanders |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: easily slips in and permeates our souls. For I affirm that the good is the
beautiful. You will agree to that?
Yes.
This I say from a sort of notion that what is neither good nor evil is the
friend of the beautiful and the good, and I will tell you why I am inclined
to think so: I assume that there are three principles--the good, the bad,
and that which is neither good nor bad. You would agree--would you not?
I agree.
And neither is the good the friend of the good, nor the evil of the evil,
nor the good of the evil;--these alternatives are excluded by the previous
argument; and therefore, if there be such a thing as friendship or love at
Lysis |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: P.S.--I see by the papers that this imfamous old fraud has just
died again, in Arkansas. This makes six times that he is known
to have died, and always in a new place. The death of Washington's
body-servant has ceased to be a novelty; it's charm is gone;
the people are tired of it; let it cease. This well-meaning
but misguided negro has not put six different communities to the
expense of burying him in state, and has swindled tens of thousands
of people into following him to the grave under the delusion that
a select and peculiar distinction was being conferred upon them.
Let him stay buried for good now; and let that newspaper suffer
the severest censure that shall ever, in all the future time,
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