| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: scold him either, mind. I was at the Heights by half-past six, and
generally stayed till half-past eight, and then galloped home. It
was not to amuse myself that I went: I was often wretched all the
time. Now and then I was happy: once in a week perhaps. At
first, I expected there would be sad work persuading you to let me
keep my word to Linton: for I had engaged to call again next day,
when we quitted him; but, as you stayed up-stairs on the morrow, I
escaped that trouble. While Michael was refastening the lock of
the park door in the afternoon, I got possession of the key, and
told him how my cousin wished me to visit him, because he was sick,
and couldn't come to the Grange; and how papa would object to my
Wuthering Heights |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: farm where everything has its price, who would carry the landscape,
who would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for
him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing
grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers,
whose trees no fruits, but dollars; who loves not the beauty of his
fruits, whose fruits are not ripe for him till they are turned to
dollars. Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth. Farmers are
respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor --
poor farmers. A model farm! where the house stands like a fungus in
a muckheap, chambers for men horses, oxen, and swine, cleansed and
uncleansed, all contiguous to one another! Stocked with men! A
Walden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: prophetical management of the Meteorological Office, but where
the secret of human hearts cannot be captured either by prying or
praying, it was infinitely more likely that the sanest of my
friends should nurse the germ of incipient madness than that I
should turn into a writer of tales.
To survey with wonder the changes of one's own self is a
fascinating pursuit for idle hours. The field is so wide, the
surprises so varied, the subject so full of unprofitable but
curious hints as to the work of unseen forces, that one does not
weary easily of it. I am not speaking here of megalomaniacs who
rest uneasy under the crown of their unbounded conceit--who
Some Reminiscences |
