| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: That beggars mounted run their horse to death.
'T is beauty that doth oft make women proud;
But, God he knows, thy share thereof is small.
'T is virtue that doth make them most admir'd;
The contrary doth make thee wond'red at.
'T is government that makes them seem divine;
The want thereof makes thee abominable.
Thou art as opposite to every good
As the Antipodes are unto us,
Or as the south to the Septentrion.
O tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide!
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: painted when he was nearly seventy. Even those who are not
connoisseurs can see that these frescos are painted by rule, that
the artist, having stocked his memory with a certain set of
forms, is making use of them to fill out his tableau; that he
wantonly multiplies queer attitudes and ingenious
foreshortenings; that the lively invention, the grand outburst of
feeling, the perfect truth, by which his earlier works are
distinguished, have disappeared; and that, if he is still
superior to all others, he is nevertheless inferior to himself.
The careers of Scott, of Goethe, and of Voltaire will furnish
parallel examples. In every school of art, too, the flourishing
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: wearing an apron and with darned stockings on his crooked little
legs, ran into the kitchen with a frightened face.
'Grandma, a dreadful old man wants to see you.'
Lukerya looked out at the door.
'There is a pilgrim of some kind, a man . . .'
Praskovya Mikhaylovna rubbed her thin elbows against one another,
wiped her hands on her apron and went upstairs to get a
five-kopek piece [about a penny] out of her purse for him, but
remembering that she had nothing less than a ten-kopek piece she
decided to give him some bread instead. She returned to the
cupboard, but suddenly blushed at the thought of having grudged
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