| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: elder Stennis, revolted at the thought, moved for the country, a
forest if possible, and a long walk. At once the English
speakers rallied to the name of any exercise: even to me, who
have been often twitted with my sedentary habits, the thought
of country air and stillness proved invincibly attractive. It
appeared, upon investigation, we had just time to hail a cab
and catch one of the fast trains for Fontainebleau. Beyond the
clothes we stood in, all were destitute of what is called (with
dainty vagueness) personal effects; and it was earnestly
mooted, on the other side, whether we had not time to call upon
the way and pack a satchel? But the Stennis boys exclaimed
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: course, was extremely anxious about the good appearance of the
beloved object; and, though I was the one to glean compliments
ashore, B- had the more intimate pride of feeling, resembling that
of a devoted handmaiden. And that sort of faithful and proud
devotion went so far as to make him go about flicking the dust off
the varnished teak-wood rail of the little craft with a silk
pocket-handkerchief - a present from Mrs. B-, I believe.
That was the effect of his love for the barque. The effect of his
admirable lack of the sense of security once went so far as to make
him remark to me: "Well, sir, you ARE a lucky man!"
It was said in a tone full of significance, but not exactly
The Mirror of the Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: speculative politics but of physics also: for are not the residual
phenomena of chemists a valuable source of improvement in theory?
His own method is essentially historical though by no means
empirical. On the contrary, this far-seeing thinker, rightly
styled IL MAESTRO DI COLOR CHE SANNO, may be said to have
apprehended clearly that the true method is neither exclusively
empirical nor exclusively speculative, but rather a union of both
in the process called Analysis or the Interpretation of Facts,
which has been defined as the application to facts of such general
conceptions as may fix the important characteristics of the
phenomena, and present them permanently in their true relations.
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