| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: swam again and again before his eyes like a vision of a brilliant
future; and at last he lay down and slept with clenched fists.
When a young man makes up his mind that he will work all night,
the chances are that seven times out of ten he will sleep till
morning. Such vigils do not begin before we are turned twenty.
The next morning Paris was wrapped in one of the dense fogs that
throw the most punctual people out in their calculations as to
the time; even the most business-like folk fail to keep their
appointments in such weather, and ordinary mortals wake up at
noon and fancy it is eight o'clock. On this morning it was half-
past nine, and Mme. Vauquer still lay abed. Christophe was late,
Father Goriot |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Child of Storm by H. Rider Haggard: dead dog Umbelazi?"
Cetewayo took the ornament and examined it, showing it to one or two of
the captains near him, who nodded their heads gravely.
"Yes," he said, "this is the war plume of Umbelazi, beloved of the King,
strong and shining pillar of the Great House; we know it well, that war
plume at the sight of which many a knee has loosened. And so you killed
him, 'Eater-up-of-Elephants,' father of Mameena, you who this morning
were one of the meanest of his jackals. Now, what reward shall I give
you for this mighty deed, O Umbezi?"
"A great reward, O Terrible One," began Umbezi, but in an awful voice
Cetewayo bade him be silent.
Child of Storm |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: proposes it. For what is a practical scheme? A practical scheme
is either a scheme that is already in existence, or a scheme that
could be carried out under existing conditions. But it is exactly
the existing conditions that one objects to; and any scheme that
could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish. The conditions
will be done away with, and human nature will change. The only
thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes.
Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that
fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not
on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV. was that he
thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his
|
