| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: done to the spine; but Mr Robinson found nothing to increase alarm,
and Charles Musgrove began, consequently, to feel no necessity
for longer confinement. The child was to be kept in bed and amused
as quietly as possible; but what was there for a father to do?
This was quite a female case, and it would be highly absurd in him,
who could be of no use at home, to shut himself up. His father
very much wished him to meet Captain Wentworth, and there being
no sufficient reason against it, he ought to go; and it ended in his
making a bold, public declaration, when he came in from shooting,
of his meaning to dress directly, and dine at the other house.
"Nothing can be going on better than the child," said he;
Persuasion |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: as these play for me, for an audience of one, and they cannot deceive
me. I can look into their inmost thoughts, and read them as God reads
them. Nothing is hidden from me. Nothing is refused to the holder of
the purse-strings to loose and to bind. I am rich enough to buy the
consciences of those who control the action of ministers, from their
office boys to their mistresses. Is not that power?--I can possess the
fairest women, receive their softest caresses; is not that Pleasure?
And is not your whole social economy summed up in terms of Power and
Pleasure?
" 'There are ten of us in Paris, silent, unknown kings, the arbiters
of your destinies. What is life but a machine set in motion by money?
Gobseck |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: to be altogether natural. Still . . . But at the moment it presented
itself simply as a confounded nuisance. The steamer was sunk.
They had started two days before in a sudden hurry up the river
with the manager on board, in charge of some volunteer skipper,
and before they had been out three hours they tore the bottom
out of her on stones, and she sank near the south bank.
I asked myself what I was to do there, now my boat was lost.
As a matter of fact, I had plenty to do in fishing my command
out of the river. I had to set about it the very next day.
That, and the repairs when I brought the pieces to the station,
took some months.
Heart of Darkness |
