| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: he to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows
nothing of the age in which he lives. To realise the nineteenth
century, one must realise every century that has preceded it and
that has contributed to its making. To know anything about oneself
one must know all about others. There must be no mood with which
one cannot sympathise, no dead mode of life that one cannot make
alive. Is this impossible? I think not. By revealing to us the
absolute mechanism of all action, and so freeing us from the self-
imposed and trammelling burden of moral responsibility, the
scientific principle of Heredity has become, as it were, the
warrant for the contemplative life. It has shown us that we are
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: His eye was dim; no more radiance. His tears were also exhausted;
they no longer collected in the corner of his eye-lid; that thoughtful
eye was dry. The old man's head was still craned forward; his chin
moved at times; the folds in his gaunt neck were painful to behold.
Sometimes, when the weather was bad, he had an umbrella under his arm,
but he never opened it.
The good women of the quarter said: "He is an innocent."
The children followed him and laughed.
BOOK NINTH.--SUPREME SHADOW, SUPREME DAWN
CHAPTER I
PITY FOR THE UNHAPPY, BUT INDULGENCE FOR THE HAPPY
Les Miserables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: Almayer and his daughter. Yet it was not so. As if it were some
sort of evil spell, my banjoist cabin-mate's interruption, as
related above, had arrested them short at the point of that
fateful sunset for many weeks together. It was always thus with
this book, begun in '89 and finished in '94--with that shortest
of all the novels which it was to be my lot to write. Between
its opening exclamation calling Almayer to his dinner in his
wife's voice and Abdullah's (his enemy) mental reference to the
God of Islam--"The Merciful, the Compassionate"--which closes the
book, there were to come several long sea passages, a visit (to
use the elevated phraseology suitable to the occasion) to the
Some Reminiscences |
