| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: place--out of which their friends had passed, and the charm of it
was that even before they had spoken they had practically arranged
with each other to stay behind for talk. The charm, happily, was
in other things too--partly in there being scarce a spot at
Weatherend without something to stay behind for. It was in the way
the autumn day looked into the high windows as it waned; the way
the red light, breaking at the close from under a low sombre sky,
reached out in a long shaft and played over old wainscots, old
tapestry, old gold, old colour. It was most of all perhaps in the
way she came to him as if, since she had been turned on to deal
with the simpler sort, he might, should he choose to keep the whole
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: "Count Rostov."
"Oh, very well, you may stay in attendance on me."
"Count Ilya Rostov's son?" asked Dolgorukov.
But Rostov did not reply.
"Then I may reckon on it, your excellency?"
"I will give the order."
"Tomorrow very likely I may be sent with some message to the
Emperor," thought Rostov.
"Thank God!"
The fires and shouting in the enemy's army were occasioned by the
fact that while Napoleon's proclamation was being read to the troops
 War and Peace |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: study of the ancients but a return to the real world (for that is
what they did); and what, said Mazzini, is mediaevalism but
individuality?
It is really from the union of Hellenism, in its breadth, its
sanity of purpose, its calm possession of beauty, with the
adventive, the intensified individualism, the passionate colour of
the romantic spirit, that springs the art of the nineteenth century
in England, as from the marriage of Faust and Helen of Troy sprang
the beautiful boy Euphorion.
Such expressions as 'classical' and 'romantic' are, it is true,
often apt to become the mere catchwords of schools. We must always
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