| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: But I believe my feelings are stronger than anybody's;
I am sure they are too strong for my own peace; and to see
myself supplanted in your friendship by strangers does cut
me to the quick, I own. These Tilneys seem to swallow up
everything else."
Catherine thought this reproach equally strange
and unkind. Was it the part of a friend thus to expose her
feelings to the notice of others? Isabella appeared to her
ungenerous and selfish, regardless of everything but her
own gratification. These painful ideas crossed her mind,
though she said nothing. Isabella, in the meanwhile,
Northanger Abbey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: As for the confidences and expressions of love that were heard not
only in cornfields but in lamplit rooms, where the windows opened
on the garden, and men with cigars kissed women with grey hairs,
they were not to be counted. Some said that the sky was an emblem
of the life to come. Long-tailed birds clattered and screamed,
and crossed from wood to wood, with golden eyes in their plumage.
But while all this went on by land, very few people thought
about the sea. They took it for granted that the sea was calm;
and there was no need, as there is in many houses when the creeper
taps on the bedroom windows, for the couples to murmur before
they kiss, "Think of the ships to-night," or "Thank Heaven,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: This too must be borne in mind, that in other states equals in age,[7]
for the most part, associate together, and such an atmosphere is
little conducive to modesty.[8] Whereas in Sparta Lycurgus was careful
so to blend the ages[9] that the younger men must benefit largely by
the experience of the elder--an education in itself, and the more so
since by custom of the country conversation at the common meal has
reference to the honourable acts which this man or that man may have
performed in relation to the state. The scene, in fact, but little
lends itself to the intrusion of violence or drunken riot; ugly speech
and ugly deeds alike are out of place. Amongst other good results
obtained through this out-door system of meals may be mentioned these:
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