| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: simplicity,--I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind
and character, not that other simplicity which is only an euphemism for
folly?
Very true, he replied.
And if our youth are to do their work in life, must they not make these
graces and harmonies their perpetual aim?
They must.
And surely the art of the painter and every other creative and constructive
art are full of them,--weaving, embroidery, architecture, and every kind of
manufacture; also nature, animal and vegetable,--in all of them there is
grace or the absence of grace. And ugliness and discord and inharmonious
The Republic |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: noses and sneering, indifferent eyes. She was by a window,
she pushed it open with a jerk. She stepped out into the garden.
Her eyes swam with tears of rage.
"Damn that man!" she exclaimed, having acquired some of Helen's words.
"Damn his insolence!"
She stood in the middle of the pale square of light which the
window she had opened threw upon the grass. The forms of great
black trees rose massively in front of her. She stood still,
looking at them, shivering slightly with anger and excitement.
She heard the trampling and swinging of the dancers behind her,
and the rhythmic sway of the waltz music.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: never hope to be worthy of the honor.
My wife will take my mother's place, and the children ours.
Masha will fill the part of both my aunts, except for their
sorrow; and there will even be Gasha there to take the place of
Prashovya Ilyínitchna.
The only thing lacking will be some one to take the part you
played in the life of our family. We shall never find such a noble
and loving heart as yours. There is no one to succeed you.
There will be three new faces that will appear among us from
time to time: my brothers, especially one who will often be with
us, Nikólenka, who will be an old bachelor, bald, retired,
|
