| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: because the public can never find expression for anything. The
artist is never morbid. He expresses everything. He stands
outside his subject, and through its medium produces incomparable
and artistic effects. To call an artist morbid because he deals
with morbidity as his subject-matter is as silly as if one called
Shakespeare mad because he wrote 'King Lear.'
On the whole, an artist in England gains something by being
attacked. His individuality is intensified. He becomes more
completely himself. Of course, the attacks are very gross, very
impertinent, and very contemptible. But then no artist expects
grace from the vulgar mind, or style from the suburban intellect.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: not tall. He would make her a necklace of red bryony berries, that
would be quite as pretty as the white berries that she wore on her
dress, and when she was tired of them, she could throw them away,
and he would find her others. He would bring her acorn-cups and
dew-drenched anemones, and tiny glow-worms to be stars in the pale
gold of her hair.
But where was she? He asked the white rose, and it made him no
answer. The whole palace seemed asleep, and even where the
shutters had not been closed, heavy curtains had been drawn across
the windows to keep out the glare. He wandered all round looking
for some place through which he might gain an entrance, and at last
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: heart that has sown good to reap gratitude can think itself great?
By the end of the second year of his apostolic work, Popinot had
turned the storeroom at the bottom of his house into a parlor, lighted
by the three iron-barred windows. The walls and ceiling of this
spacious room were whitewashed, and the furniture consisted of wooden
benches like those seen in schools, a clumsy cupboard, a walnut-wood
writing-table, and an armchair. In the cupboard were his registers of
donations, his tickets for orders for bread, and his diary. He kept
his ledger like a tradesman, that he might not be ruined by kindness.
All the sorrows of the neighborhood were entered and numbered in a
book, where each had its little account, as merchants' customers have
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