| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: and it happened that for some reason or other I took in as I had
perhaps never done before the beauty of his rich blank gaze. It
was charged with experience as the sky is charged with light, and I
felt on the instant as if we had been overspanned and conjoined by
the great arch of a bridge or the great dome of a temple.
Doubtless I was rendered peculiarly sensitive to it by something in
the way I had been giving him up and sinking him. While I met it I
stood there smitten, and I felt myself responding to it with a sort
of guilty grimace. This brought back his attention in a smile
which expressed for me a cheerful weary patience, a bruised noble
gentleness. I had told Miss Anvoy that he had no dignity, but what
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money,
furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who
refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse
to sustain the unjust government which makes the war;
is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards
and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that
degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but
not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment.
Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are
all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness.
After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: at Plumfield. Then a family of six or seven boys sprung up
like mushrooms, and flourished surprisingly, poor boys as well as
rich, for Mr. Laurence was continually finding some touching case
of destitution, and begging the Bhaers to take pity on the child,
and he would gladly pay a trifle for its support. In this way,
the sly old gentleman got round proud Jo, and furnished her with
the style of boy in which she most delighted.
Of course it was uphill work at first, and Jo made queer
mistakes, but the wise Professor steered her safely into calmer
waters, and the most rampant ragamuffin was conquered in the end.
How Jo did enjoy her `wilderness of boys', and how poor, dear
Little Women |
