| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: not so successful as it might have been, for the result
of it was occasionally a vague irritation, which expressed
itself in hostile criticism of several British institutions.
Bessie Alden went to some entertainments at which she met
Lord Lambeth; but she went to others at which his lordship was
neither actually nor potentially present; and it was chiefly
on these latter occasions that she encountered those literary
and artistic celebrities of whom mention has been made.
After a while she reduced the matter to a principle.
If Lord Lambeth should appear anywhere, it was a symbol that
there would be no poets and philosophers; and in consequence--
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: or some white nerve in the body, delighting in the conception of the absolute
dependence of the spirit on certain physical conditions, morbid or healthy,
normal or diseased. Yet, as has been said of him before, no theory of life
seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself. He felt
keenly conscious of how barren all intellectual speculation is when separated
from action and experiment. He knew that the senses, no less than the soul,
have their spiritual mysteries to reveal.
And so he would now study perfumes and the secrets of their manufacture,
distilling heavily scented oils and burning odorous gums from the East.
He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not its counterpart
in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover their true relations,
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: were only rushing upon their prey; and this fury of theirs, it
seems, was principally occasioned by their seeing our horses behind
us. I ordered our men to fire as before, every other man; and they
took their aim so sure that they killed several of the wolves at
the first volley; but there was a necessity to keep a continual
firing, for they came on like devils, those behind pushing on those
before.
When we had fired a second volley of our fusees, we thought they
stopped a little, and I hoped they would have gone off, but it was
but a moment, for others came forward again; so we fired two
volleys of our pistols; and I believe in these four firings we had
Robinson Crusoe |
