| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: how much I am before-hand with the world in the spring,
and we will plan our improvements accordingly."
In the mean time, till all these alterations could
be made from the savings of an income of five hundred
a-year by a woman who never saved in her life, they were
wise enough to be contented with the house as it was;
and each of them was busy in arranging their particular
concerns, and endeavoring, by placing around them books
and other possessions, to form themselves a home.
Marianne's pianoforte was unpacked and properly disposed of;
and Elinor's drawings were affixed to the walls of their
Sense and Sensibility |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: recognize good music wherever we hear it." And he made a slight bow in
his turn.
The Padre laughed outright with pleasure and laid his hand upon the young
man's arm. "You have no intention of going away to-morrow, I trust?"
"With your leave," answered Gaston, "I will have such an intention no
longer."
It was with the air and gait of mutual understanding that the two now
walked on together toward the Padre's door. The guest was twenty-five,
the host sixty.
"And have you been in America long?" inquired Gaston.
"Twenty years."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: For contemplation, not action, is the Far Oriental's ideal of life.
The repose of self-adjustment like that to which our whole solar
system is slowly tending as its death,--this to him appears, though
from no scientific deduction, the end of all existence. So he sits
and ponders, abstractly, vaguely, upon everything in general,
--synonym, alas, to man's finite mind, for nothing in particular,--
till even the sense of self seems to vanish, and through the
mist-like portal of unconsciousness he floats out into the vast
indistinguishable sameness of Nirvana's sea.
At first sight Buddhism is much more like Christianity than those of
us who stay at home and speculate upon it commonly appreciate. As a
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