| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: though of all poses a moral pose is the most offensive, still to
have a pose at all is something. It is a formal recognition of the
importance of treating life from a definite and reasoned
standpoint. That Humanitarian Sympathy wars against Nature, by
securing the survival of the failure, may make the man of science
loathe its facile virtues. The political economist may cry out
against it for putting the improvident on the same level as the
provident, and so robbing life of the strongest, because most
sordid, incentive to industry. But, in the eyes of the thinker,
the real harm that emotional sympathy does is that it limits
knowledge, and so prevents us from solving any single social
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: the dark narrow alley of shelves to the street window.
A gloomy spectacle it was indeed, with a cold rain
slanting through the discredited remnants of a fog,
which the east wind had broken up, but could not drive away,
and with only now and again a passer-by moving across
the dim vista, masked beneath an umbrella, or bent forward
with chin buried in turned-up collar. In the doorway
outside the sulky boy stamped his feet and slapped his
sides with his arms in pantomimic mutiny against the task
of guarding the book-stalls' dripping covers, which nobody
would be mad enough to pause over, much less to lift.
The Market-Place |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: you drawn in to do what you had resolved against, and what
you are known to think will be disagreeable to my uncle.
It will be such a triumph to the others!"
"They will not have much cause of triumph when they
see how infamously I act. But, however, triumph there
certainly will be, and I must brave it. But if I can be
the means of restraining the publicity of the business,
of limiting the exhibition, of concentrating our folly,
I shall be well repaid. As I am now, I have no influence,
I can do nothing: I have offended them, and they will
not hear me; but when I have put them in good-humour
Mansfield Park |
