| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: nature, was too loving, too devoted, too exacting--I do not know. Evil
days have brought light with them! For a long while I blamed another,
now I am content to bear the whole blame. At my own expense, I have
absolved that other of whom I once thought I had a right to complain.
I had not the art to keep him; fate has punished me heavily for my
lack of skill. I only knew how to love; how can one keep oneself in
mind when one loves? So I was a slave when I should have sought to be
a tyrant. Those who know me may condemn me, but they will respect me
too. Pain has taught me that I must not lay myself open to this a
second time. I cannot understand how it is that I am living yet, after
the anguish of that first week of the most fearful crisis in a woman's
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: that thou bring the poor THAT ARE CAST OUT (margin, 'afflicted') to
THY house?" The falsehood on which the writer had mentally founded
himself, as previously stated by him, was this: "To confound the
functions of the dispensers of the poor-rates with those of the
dispensers of a charitable institution is a great and pernicious
error." This sentence is so accurately and exquisitely wrong, that
its substance must be thus reversed in our minds before we can deal
with any existing problem of national distress. "To understand that
the dispensers of the poor-rates are the almoners of the nation, and
should distribute its alms with a gentleness and freedom of hand as
much greater and franker than that possible to individual charity,
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: Unfortunately this confusion of the decorative with the dramatic
element in both literature and music is maintained by the example
of great masters in both arts. Very touching dramatic expression
can be combined with decorative symmetry of versification when
the artist happens to possess both the decorative and dramatic
gifts, and to have cultivated both hand in hand. Shakespeare and
Shelley, for instance, far from being hampered by the
conventional obligation to write their dramas in verse, found it
much the easiest and cheapest way of producing them. But if
Shakespeare had been compelled by custom to write entirely in
prose, all his ordinary dialogue might have been as good as the
|
