| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: passed away. With me it was different. I felt it myself, and made
others feel it. Byron was a symbolic figure, but his relations
were to the passion of his age and its weariness of passion. Mine
were to something more noble, more permanent, of more vital issue,
of larger scope.
The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured
into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself
with being a FLANEUR, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded
myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the
spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me
a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: fastened, and drooped in a steep curve to circular
openings on the opposite side of the space, and even
as Graham noted these a remote and tiny figure of a
man clad in pale blue arrested his attention. This little
figure was far overhead across the space beside the
higher fastening of one of these festoons, hanging
forward from a little ledge of masonry and handling some
well-nigh invisible strings dependent from the line.
Then suddenly, with a swoop that sent Graham's heart
into his mouth, this man had rushed down the curve
and vanished through a round opening on the hither
When the Sleeper Wakes |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: "Oh, I like the past, but I don't like critics," the old woman declared
with her fine tranquility.
"Neither do I, but I like their discoveries."
"Aren't they mostly lies?"
"The lies are what they sometimes discover," I said, smiling at the quiet
impertinence of this. "They often lay bare the truth."
"The truth is God's, it isn't man's; we had better leave it alone.
Who can judge of it--who can say?"
"We are terribly in the dark, I know," I admitted; "but if we give
up trying what becomes of all the fine things? What becomes of
the work I just mentioned, that of the great philosophers and poets?
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