| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with
five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the
private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone.
"Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos.
Plus habet hic vitae, plus habet ille viae."
Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians.
I have more of God, they more of the road.
It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in
Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may
perhaps find some "Symmes' Hole" by which to get at the inside at
last. England and France, Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave
Walden |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous by Oscar Wilde: 1895--namely, the enlarged version of Mr. W. H., the second draft of
A Florentine Tragedy, and The Duchess of Padua (which, existing in a
prompt copy, was of less importance than the others); nor with The
Cardinal of Arragon, the manuscript of which I never saw. I
scarcely think it ever existed, though Wilde used to recite proposed
passages for it.
Some years after Wilde's death I was looking over the papers and
letters rescued from Tite Street when I came across loose sheets of
manuscript and typewriting, which I imagined were fragments of The
Duchess of Padua; on putting them together in a coherent form I
recognised that they belonged to the lost Florentine Tragedy. I
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party, who were
well clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too warm,
these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to his
great surprise, "to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing
such a roasting." So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked
with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes. Is it
impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the
intellectualness of the civilized man? According to Liebig, man's
body is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the internal
combustion in the lungs. In cold weather we eat more, in warm less.
The animal heat is the result of a slow combustion, and disease and
Walden |
