| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: casing of the door in the next room, turned pale and dropped into a
chair.
"What is the matter, madame?" cried the officer, springing toward her.
But Ferragus stretched forth an arm and flung the intruder back with
so sharp a thrust that Auguste fancied he had received a blow with an
iron bar full on his chest.
"Back! monsieur," said the man. "What do you want there? For five or
six days you have been roaming about the neighborhood. Are you a spy?"
"Are you Monsieur Ferragus?" said the baron.
"No, monsieur."
"Nevertheless," continued Auguste, "it is to you that I must return
Ferragus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: this artistic sense of limit, is the characteristic of all great
work and poetry; of the vision of Homer as of the vision of Dante,
of Keats and William Morris as of Chaucer and Theocritus. It lies
at the base of all noble, realistic and romantic work as opposed to
the colourless and empty abstractions of our own eighteenth-century
poets and of the classical dramatists of France, or of the vague
spiritualities of the German sentimental school: opposed, too, to
that spirit of transcendentalism which also was root and flower
itself of the great Revolution, underlying the impassioned
contemplation of Wordsworth and giving wings and fire to the eagle-
like flight of Shelley, and which in the sphere of philosophy,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Underground City by Jules Verne: of Aberfoyle, Mr. Starr!"
"Ay, Harry, so they have," replied the engineer.
"Indeed," cried the young man, "it's a pity that all the globe
was not made of coal; then there would have been enough to last
millions of years!"
"No doubt there would, Harry; it must be acknowledged,
however, that nature has shown more forethought by forming
our sphere principally of sandstone, limestone, and granite,
which fire cannot consume."
"Do you mean to say, Mr. Starr, that mankind would have ended
by burning their own globe?"
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