| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: arts, for, just as Nature is matter struggling into mind, so Art is
mind expressing itself under the conditions of matter, and thus,
even in the lowliest of her manifestations, she speaks to both
sense and soul alike. To the aesthetic temperament the vague is
always repellent. The Greeks were a nation of artists, because
they were spared the sense of the infinite. Like Aristotle, like
Goethe after he had read Kant, we desire the concrete, and nothing
but the concrete can satisfy us.
ERNEST. What then do you propose?
GILBERT. It seems to me that with the development of the critical
spirit we shall be able to realise, not merely our own lives, but
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: Henry over the heavy clusters of purple-lipped irises that stood
in the centre of the table, "what do you mean by good, Harry?"
"To be good is to be in harmony with one's self," he replied,
touching the thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers.
"Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.
One's own life--that is the important thing. As for the lives
of one's neighbours, if one wishes to be a prig or a Puritan,
one can flaunt one's moral views about them, but they are not
one's concern. Besides, individualism has really the higher aim.
Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age.
I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: and pantings which seemed likely to end in waking, when Raffles,
with a long half-stifled moan, started up and stared round him
in terror, trembling and gasping. But he made no further noise,
and Bulstrode, setting down the candle, awaited his recovery.
It was a quarter of an hour later before Bulstrode, with a cold
peremptoriness of manner which he had not before shown, said, "I came
to call you thus early, Mr. Raffles, because I have ordered the carriage
to be ready at half-past seven, and intend myself to conduct you as far
as Ilsely, where you can either take the railway or await a coach."
Raffles was about to speak, but Bulstrode anticipated him imperiously
with the words, "Be silent, sir, and hear what I have to say.
Middlemarch |
