| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: pavement is almost as treacherous as ice. Washing
dangles above washing from the windows; the houses bulge
outwards upon flimsy brackets; you see a bit of sculpture
in a dark corner; at the top of all, a gable and a few
crowsteps are printed on the sky. Here, you come into a
court where the children are at play and the grown people
sit upon their doorsteps, and perhaps a church spire
shows itself above the roofs. Here, in the narrowest of
the entry, you find a great old mansion still erect, with
some insignia of its former state - some scutcheon, some
holy or courageous motto, on the lintel. The local
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: religion became as it were crystallised and isolated from progress
at an early period of its evolution. Their gods remained mere
abstractions of commonplace virtues or uninteresting
personifications of the useful things of life. The old primitive
creed was indeed always upheld as a state institution on account of
the enormous facilities it offered for cheating in politics, but as
a spiritual system of belief it was unanimously rejected at a very
early period both by the common people and the educated classes,
for the sensible reason that it was so extremely dull. The former
took refuge in the mystic sensualities of the worship of Isis, the
latter in the Stoical rules of life. The Romans classified their
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: had been the means of precipitating occupied a far longer length
of her meditations.
Elfride's disquiet now was on account of that miserable promise to
meet Stephen, which returned like a spectre again and again. The
perception of his littleness beside Knight grew upon her
alarmingly. She now thought how sound had been her father's
advice to her to give him up, and was as passionately desirous of
following it as she had hitherto been averse. Perhaps there is
nothing more hardening to the tone of young minds than thus to
discover how their dearest and strongest wishes become gradually
attuned by Time the Cynic to the very note of some selfish policy
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
