| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: sympathise with a friend's success.
In the modern stress of competition and struggle for place, such
sympathy is naturally rare, and is also very much stifled by the
immoral ideal of uniformity of type and conformity to rule which is
so prevalent everywhere, and is perhaps most obnoxious in England.
Sympathy with pain there will, of course, always be. It is one of
the first instincts of man. The animals which are individual, the
higher animals, that is to say, share it with us. But it must be
remembered that while sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of joy
in the world, sympathy with pain does not really diminish the
amount of pain. It may make man better able to endure evil, but
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: pilots were in great demand, and were correspondingly scarce.
The time for revenge was come. It was a bitter pill to have to
accept association pilots at last, yet captains and owners agreed
that there was no other way. But none of these outcasts offered!
So there was a still bitterer pill to be swallowed:
they must be sought out and asked for their services.
Captain ---- was the first man who found it necessary to take
the dose, and he had been the loudest derider of the organization.
He hunted up one of the best of the association pilots and said--
'Well, you boys have rather got the best of us for a
little while, so I'll give in with as good a grace as I can.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: like retreating footsteps.
"There, they are going now," thought he. "I am alone."
All at once, he heard over his head a sound which seemed to him
to be a clap of thunder.
It was a shovelful of earth falling on the coffin.
A second shovelful fell.
One of the holes through which he breathed had just been stopped up.
A third shovelful of earth fell.
Then a fourth.
There are things which are too strong for the strongest man.
Jean Valjean lost consciousness.
Les Miserables |
