| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: there is a fine tempting fitness about this; and I meant he was to
hang. But now on considering my minor characters, I saw there were
five people who would - in a sense who must - break prison and
attempt his rescue. They were capable, hardy folks, too, who might
very well succeed. Why should they not then? Why should not young
Hermiston escape clear out of the country? and be happy, if he
could, with his - But soft! I will not betray my secret of my
heroine. Suffice it to breathe in your ear that she was what Hardy
calls (and others in their plain way don't) a Pure Woman. Much
virtue in a capital letter, such as yours was.
Write to me again in my infinite distance. Tell me about your new
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: These may seem selfish considerations; but you can't, in sound
morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It
is his clear duty. And least of all you can condemn an artist
pursuing, however humbly and imperfectly, a creative aim. In
that interior world where his thought and his emotions go seeking
for the experience of imagined adventures, there are no
policemen, no law, no pressure of circumstance or dread of
opinion to keep him within bounds. Who then is going to say Nay
to his temptations if not his conscience?
And besides--this, remember, is the place and the moment of
perfectly open talk--I think that all ambitions are lawful except
Some Reminiscences |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from King James Bible: PSA 80:6 Thou makest us a strife unto our neighbours: and our enemies
laugh among themselves.
PSA 80:7 Turn us again, O God of hosts, and cause thy face to shine;
and we shall be saved.
PSA 80:8 Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: thou hast cast out the
heathen, and planted it.
PSA 80:9 Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take
deep root, and it filled the land.
PSA 80:10 The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs
thereof were like the goodly cedars.
PSA 80:11 She sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto
King James Bible |
