| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: brother, in whose house he had sheltered for some seventeen years
his misanthropical timidity before the commonest problems of
life, having died in the early fifties, Mr. Nicholas B. had to
screw his courage up to the sticking-point and come to some
decision as to the future. After a long and agonising hesitation
he was persuaded at last to become the tenant of some fifteen
hundred acres out of the estate of a friend in the neighbourhood.
The terms of the lease were very advantageous, but the retired
situation of the village and a plain comfortable house in good
repair were, I fancy, the greatest inducements. He lived there
quietly for about ten years, seeing very few people and taking no
Some Reminiscences |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: cultivated the mind, the less courage there is to face important
subjects objectively. The ablest and most highly cultivated people
continually discuss religion, politics, and sex: it is hardly an
exaggeration to say that they discuss nothing else with fully-awakened
interest. Commoner and less cultivated people, even when they form
societies for discussion, make a rule that politics and religion are
not to be mentioned, and take it for granted that no decent person
would attempt to discuss sex. The three subjects are feared because
they rouse the crude passions which call for furious gratification in
murder and rapine at worst, and, at best, lead to quarrels and
undesirable states of consciousness.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the girl. "You cannot imagine how I loathe the man now that
I know him in his true colors. For years he has importuned
me to marry him, and though I never cared for him in that
way at all, and never could, I felt that he was a very good
friend and that his constancy demanded some return on my
part--my friendship and sympathy at least; but now I shiver
whenever he is near me, just as I would were I to find a
snake coiled close beside me. I cannot abide treachery."
"Nor I, Miss Harding," agreed Theriere glibly. "The man
deserves nothing but your contempt, though for policy's sake
I hope that you will find it possible to lead him on until his
The Mucker |
