| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: a green baize apron, was now sweeping and dusting upstairs, intent
and conscientious, as though he were playing at it; and Mrs Verloc,
warned in the kitchen by the clatter of the cracked bell, had
merely come to the glazed door of the parlour, and putting the
curtain aside a little, had peered into the dim shop. Seeing her
husband sitting there shadowy and bulky, with his hat tilted far
back on his head, she had at once returned to her stove. An hour
or more later she took the green baize apron off her brother
Stevie, and instructed him to wash his hands and face in the
peremptory tone she had used in that connection for fifteen years
or so - ever since she had, in fact, ceased to attend to the boy's
The Secret Agent |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: incomparable gain, and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the
whole world. These, however, are exceptions. The majority of
people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism -
are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves
surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous
starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by
all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man's
intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on
the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy
with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought.
Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lost Princess of Oz by L. Frank Baum: and all my people eat zosozo, and it gives us tremendous strength.
Would you like to eat some?"
"No thank you," replied the girl. "I--I don't want to get so thin."
"Well, of course one can't have strength and flesh at the same time,"
said the Czarover. "Zosozo is pure energy, and it's the only compound
of its sort in existence. I never allow our giants to have it, you
know, or they would soon become our masters, since they are bigger
that we; so I keep all the stuff locked up in my private laboratory.
Once a year I feed a teaspoonful of it to each of my people--men,
women and children--so every one of them is nearly as strong as I am.
Wouldn't YOU like a dose, sir?" he asked, turning to the Wizard.
The Lost Princess of Oz |
