| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: unstrained. The Church of Scotland, of which he held the doctrines
(though in a sense of his own) and to which he bore a clansman's
loyalty, profited often by his time and money; and though, from a
morbid sense of his own unworthiness, he would never consent to be
an office-bearer, his advice was often sought, and he served the
Church on many committees. What he perhaps valued highest in his
work were his contributions to the defence of Christianity; one of
which, in particular, was praised by Hutchinson Stirling and
reprinted at the request of Professor Crawford.
His sense of his own unworthiness I have called morbid; morbid,
too, were his sense of the fleetingness of life and his concern for
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: makers should continue and debase a brave tradition, and
lower, in their own eyes, a famous race. Better that our
serene temples were deserted than filled with trafficking and
juggling priests.
There are two just reasons for the choice of any way of life:
the first is inbred taste in the chooser; the second some
high utility in the industry selected. Literature, like any
other art, is singularly interesting to the artist; and, in a
degree peculiar to itself among the arts, it is useful to
mankind. These are the sufficient justifications for any
young man or woman who adopts it as the business of his life.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Confessio Amantis by John Gower: The bathes weren thanne araied,
With herbes tempred and assaied,
And Jason was unarmed sone
And dede as it befell to done:
Into his bath he wente anon
And wyssh him clene as eny bon;
He tok a sopp, and oute he cam,
And on his beste aray he nam,
And kempde his hed, whan he was clad,
And goth him forth al merie and glad 3810
Riht strawht into the kinges halle.
Confessio Amantis |
