| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: independent; they amuse themselves more easily then you would think.
They find delight in everything; a guarded liberty is worth many toys.
A few pebbles--pink, yellow, purple, and black, small shells, the
mysteries of sand, are a world of pleasure to them. Their wealth
consists in possessing a multitude of small things. I watch Armand and
find him talking to the flowers, the flies, the chickens, and
imitating them. He is on friendly terms with insects, and never
wearies of admiring them. Everything which is on a minute scale
interests them. Armand is beginning to ask the "why" of everything he
sees. He has come to ask what I am saying to his godmother, whom he
looks on as a fairy. Strange how children hit the mark!
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible
than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance,
they had sought to escape; Nature, in her wonderful irony,
driving out the anchorite to feed with the wild animals of
the desert and giving to the hermit the beasts of the field as
his companions.
Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism
that was to recreate life and to save it from that harsh uncomely
puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival.
It was to have its service of the intellect, certainly, yet it was
never to accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: If Kent's silly son takes his wife from the streets, what is that to me?
If Adrian Singleton writes his friend's name across a bill, am I his keeper?
I know how people chatter in England. The middle classes air their moral
prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they
call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend
that they are in smart society and on intimate terms with the people
they slander. In this country, it is enough for a man to have
distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him.
And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral,
lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land
of the hypocrite."
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
