| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: Dodd? He was a fizzle and a stick, he knew it, he knew nothing
else, and there is an undercurrent of bitterness in him. And then
the problem that Pinkerton laid down: why the artist can DO
NOTHING ELSE? is one that continually exercises myself. He cannot:
granted. But Scott could. And Montaigne. And Julius Caesar. And
many more. And why can't R. L. S.? Does it not amaze you? It
does me. I think of the Renaissance fellows, and their all-round
human sufficiency, and compare it with the ineffable smallness of
the field in which we labour and in which we do so little. I think
DAVID BALFOUR a nice little book, and very artistic, and just the
thing to occupy the leisure of a busy man; but for the top flower
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: BY THE SEASIDE
THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP
"Build me straight, O worthy Master!
Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel,
That shall laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!"
The merchant's word
Delighted the Master heard;
For his heart was in his work, and the heart
Giveth grace unto every Art.
A quiet smile played round his lips,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: cries out - O so shudderfully! - I thought it high time to be out
of that GALERE, and so I do not know yet whether it ends well or
ill; but if I ever afterwards find that they do carry things to the
extremity, I shall think more meanly of my species. It was raining
and cold outside, so I went into a BIERHALLE, and sat and brooded
over a SCHNITT (half-glass) for nearly an hour. An opera is far
more REAL than real life to me. It seems as if stage illusion, and
particularly this hardest to swallow and most conventional illusion
of them all - an opera - would never stale upon me. I wish that
life was an opera. I should like to LIVE in one; but I don't know
in what quarter of the globe I shall find a society so constituted.
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