| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: the utmost kindness. I shall certainly do it in
the way that befits my holy office," said Father
Michael to himself, really thinking that he had
forgotten the ill-feeling the boy's father had to-
wards him. He firmly believed the boy's soul
to be the only object of his pious care.
The next day, during the divinity lesson which
Father Michael was giving to Mitia Smokovni-
kov's class, he narrated the incident of the forged
coupon, adding that the culprit had been one of
the pupils of the school. "It was a very wicked
The Forged Coupon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: of Mrs. Tilney, which immediately fronted the family pew.
By that her eye was instantly caught and long retained;
and the perusal of the highly strained epitaph, in which every
virtue was ascribed to her by the inconsolable husband,
who must have been in some way or other her destroyer,
affected her even to tears.
That the general, having erected such a monument,
should be able to face it, was not perhaps very strange,
and yet that he could sit so boldly collected within its view,
maintain so elevated an air, look so fearlessly around,
nay, that he should even enter the church, seemed wonderful
Northanger Abbey |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: 208. When a philosopher nowadays makes known that he is not a
skeptic--I hope that has been gathered from the foregoing
description of the objective spirit?--people all hear it
impatiently; they regard him on that account with some
apprehension, they would like to ask so many, many questions ...
indeed among timid hearers, of whom there are now so many, he is
henceforth said to be dangerous. With his repudiation of
skepticism, it seems to them as if they heard some evil-
threatening sound in the distance, as if a new kind of explosive
were being tried somewhere, a dynamite of the spirit, perhaps a
newly discovered Russian NIHILINE, a pessimism BONAE VOLUNTATIS,
Beyond Good and Evil |
