| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: which the pencil of Leonardo da Vinci alone has rendered.
"Fools love well, sometimes," returned the marquise.
"But in this case," said the princess, "fools wouldn't have enough
credulity in their nature."
"You are right," said the marquise. "But what we ought to look for is
neither a fool nor even a man of talent. To solve our problem we need
a man of genius. Genius alone has the faith of childhood, the religion
of love, and willingly allows us to band its eyes. Look at Canalis and
the Duchesse de Chaulieu! Though we have both encountered men of
genius, they were either too far removed from us or too busy, and we
too absorbed, too frivolous."
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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: capable, being a Southerner of a concentrated, deliberate type.
His ebony hair curled slightly on the temples. He may have been
forty years old, and he was a great voyager on the inland sea.
Astute and ruthless, he could have rivalled in resource the
unfortunate son of Laertes and Anticlea. If he did not pit his
craft and audacity against the very gods, it is only because the
Olympian gods are dead. Certainly no woman could frighten him. A
one-eyed giant would not have had the ghost of a chance against
Dominic Cervoni, of Corsica, not Ithaca; and no king, son of kings,
but of very respectable family - authentic Caporali, he affirmed.
But that is as it may be. The Caporali families date back to the
The Mirror of the Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: at six years old; except where they are of towardly parts,
although I confess they learn the rudiments much earlier; during
which time they can however be properly looked upon only as
probationers: As I have been informed by a principal gentleman in
the county of Cavan, who protested to me, that he never knew
above one or two instances under the age of six, even in a part
of the kingdom so renowned for the quickest proficiency in that
art.
I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl before twelve
years old, is no saleable commodity, and even when they come to
this age, they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds
A Modest Proposal |
