| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: of a given social state. For obviously one does not revolt against
the advantages and opportunities of that state, but against the
price which must be paid for the same in the coin of accepted
morality, self-restraint, and toil. The majority of revolutionises
are the enemies of discipline and fatigue mostly. There are
natures too, to whose sense of justice the price exacted looms up
monstrously enormous, odious, oppressive, worrying, humiliating,
extortionate, intolerable. Those are the fanatics. The remaining
portion of social rebels is accounted for by vanity, the mother of
all noble and vile illusions, the companion of poets, reformers,
charlatans, prophets, and incendiaries.
The Secret Agent |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Royalty Restored/London Under Charles II by J. Fitzgerald Molloy: the very pavements around glowed so that neither man nor horse
dared tread upon them. And the flames, gradually gaining ground,
danced fantastically up and down the scaffolding, and covered the
edifice as with one blaze; whilst inside transom beams were
snapped asunder, rafters fell with destruction, and the fire
roaring through chapels and aisles as in a great furnace, could
be heard afar. And that which had been a Christian shrine was
now, a smoking ruin.
Raging onward in their fierce career, the flames darted towards
such buildings in the neighbourhood as had been previously
untouched, so that Paternoster Row, Newgate Street, the Old
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: "the right thing"; but, for her sins, she lives in a the Marais, and
her husband is a lawyer,--a lawyer before the Royal courts, however.
"Madame Firmiani, monsieur? I do not know her." This man belongs to
the species Duke. He recognizes none but the women who have been
presented at court. Pray excuse him, he was one of Napoleon's
creations.
"Madame Firmiani? surely she used to sing at the Opera-house." Species
Ninny. The individuals of this species have an answer for everything.
They will tell lies sooner than say nothing.
Two old ladies, wives of former magistrates: The First (wears a cap
with bows, her face is wrinkled, her nose sharp, voice hard, carries a
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