| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: under no necessity to work for their living, or are enabled to
choose the sphere of activity that is really congenial to them, and
gives them pleasure. These are the poets, the philosophers, the
men of science, the men of culture - in a word, the real men, the
men who have realised themselves, and in whom all Humanity gains a
partial realisation. Upon the other hand, there are a great many
people who, having no private property of their own, and being
always on the brink of sheer starvation, are compelled to do the
work of beasts of burden, to do work that is quite uncongenial to
them, and to which they are forced by the peremptory, unreasonable,
degrading Tyranny of want. These are the poor, and amongst them
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: feel the whole significance of his action yet and would not
recognise the Master's hand. He did not wish to believe that it
was the effect of his deed that lay before him, but the pitiless
hand of the Master held him and he felt he could not get away. He
was still keeping up his courage and sat on his chair in the
first row in his usual self-possessed pose, one leg carelessly
thrown over the other, and playing with his pince-nez. Yet all
the while, in the depths of his soul, he felt the cruelty,
cowardice and baseness, not only of this particular action of his
but of his whole self-willed, depraved, cruel, idle life; and
that dreadful veil which had in some unaccountable manner hidden
Resurrection |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: common lot of husbands, who proverbially mistake the early ardors
of housekeeping for a sign of settled domesticity. Alexa, at any
rate, was refuting his theory as inconsiderately as a seedling
defeats the gardener's expectations. An undefinable change had
come over her. In one sense it was a happy one, since she had
grown, if not handsomer, at least more vivid and expressive; her
beauty had become more communicable: it was as though she had
learned the conscious exercise of intuitive attributes and now
used her effects with the discrimination of an artist skilled in
values. To a dispassionate critic (as Glennard now rated himself)
the art may at times have been a little too obvious. Her attempts
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