| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum: Just then, however, there seemed to be no stopping-place that would answer
their purpose. They flew over a village so big that the Woggle-Bug declared
it was a city. and then they came to a range of high mountains with many
deep gorges and steep cliffs showing plainly.
"Now is our chance to stop," said the boy, finding
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they were very close to the mountain tops. Then he turned to the Gump and
commanded: "Stop at the first level place you see!"
"Very well," answered the Gump, and settled down upon a table of rock that
stood between two cliffs.
But not being experienced in such matters, the Gump did not judge his speed
The Marvelous Land of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: dialogue of Plato, by making out thoroughly the sense of one chapter of
a standard author, is greater than they will get from skimming whole
folios of Schlegelian aesthetics, resumes, histories of philosophy, and
the like second-hand information, or attending seven lectures a-week
till their lives' end. It is better to know one thing, than to know
about ten thousand things. I cannot help feeling painfully, after
reading those most interesting Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, that
the especial danger of this time is intellectual sciolism, vagueness,
sentimental eclecticism--and feeling, too, as Socrates of old believed,
that intellectual vagueness and shallowness, however glib, and grand,
and eloquent it may seem, is inevitably the parent of a moral vagueness
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: eyes. Poor man! he had gone over this road twenty years before, young,
prosperous, full of hope, the lover of a girl as beautiful as their
own Cesarine; he was dreaming then of happiness. To-day, in the coach
before him, sat his noble child pale and worn by vigils, and his brave
wife, whose only beauty now was that of cities through whose streets
have flowed the lava waves of a volcano. Love alone remained to him!
Cesar's sadness smothered the joy that welled up in the hearts of
Cesarine and Anselme, who embodied to his eyes the charming scene of
other days.
"Be happy, my children! you have earned the right," said the poor
father in heart-rending tones. "You may love without one bitter
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
