| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: deposited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared
by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heard gnawing out
for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who
does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality
strengthened by hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and
winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many
concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society,
deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and living tree,
which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its
well-seasoned tomb -- heard perchance gnawing out now for years by
the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board --
Walden |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: where they are going, and go there. They start with the ideal
desire of being the parish beadle, and in whatever sphere they are
placed they succeed in being the parish beadle and no more. A man
whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a
member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent
solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably
succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment.
Those who want a mask have to wear it.
But with the dynamic forces of life, and those in whom those
dynamic forces become incarnate, it is different. People whose
desire is solely for self-realisation never know where they are
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: theory but profit and yet, at an equal expense, to
outstrip all competitors in the art of conceiving and
rendering permanent deformity; and to do all this in what
is, by nature, one of the most agreeable neighbourhoods
in Britain:- what are we to say, but that this also is a
distinction, hard to earn although not greatly
worshipful?
Indifferent buildings give pain to the sensitive;
but these things offend the plainest taste. It is a
danger which threatens the amenity of the town; and as
this eruption keeps spreading on our borders, we have
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