| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: the only privileged class, it sometimes seems to me, is the pauper,
who has neither the responsibility of self-government, nor the toil
of self-support.
A minority of malcontents, some justly, some unjustly, angry with
the present state of things, will always exist in this world. But a
majority of malcontents we shall never have, as long as the workmen
are allowed to keep untouched and unthreatened their rights of free
speech, free public meeting, free combination for all purposes which
do not provoke a breach of the peace. There may be (and probably
are) to be found in London and the large towns, some of those
revolutionary propagandists who have terrified and tormented
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: inspired or bestowed by a woman disinherited of the frail advantages
pursued by the sons of Adam, is true love, the mysterious passion, the
ardent embrace of souls, a sentiment for which the day of
disenchantment never comes. That woman has charms unknown to the
world, from whose jurisdiction she withdraws herself: she is beautiful
with a meaning; her glory lies in making her imperfections forgotten,
and thus she constantly succeeds in doing so.
The celebrated attachments of history were nearly all inspired by
women in whom the vulgar mind would have found defects,--Cleopatra,
Jeanne de Naples, Diane de Poitiers, Mademoiselle de la Valliere,
Madame de Pompadour; in fact, the majority of the women whom love has
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: because he did nothing that he has been able to achieve everything,
so it is because he never speaks to us of himself in his plays that
his plays reveal him to us absolutely, and show us his true nature
and temperament far more completely than do those strange and
exquisite sonnets, even, in which he bares to crystal eyes the
secret closet of his heart. Yes, the objective form is the most
subjective in matter. Man is least himself when he talks in his
own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
ERNEST. The critic, then, being limited to the subjective form,
will necessarily be less able fully to express himself than the
artist, who has always at his disposal the forms that are
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