| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Twilight Land by Howard Pyle: have believed could be in such a house, had he not seen it with
his own eyes. Thousands of waxen tapers lit the place as bright
as day--a great oval room, floored with mosaic of a thousand
bright colors and strange figures, and hung with tapestries of
silks and satins and gold and silver. The ceiling was painted to
represent the sky, through which flew beautiful birds and winged
figures so life-like that no one could tell that they were only
painted, and not real. At the farther side of the room were two
richly cushioned couches, and thither the old man led the way
with the young spendthrift following, wonder-struck, and there
the two sat themselves down. Then the old man smote his hands
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: than most of my contemporaries. They are tolerably depraved,
my contemporaries!" He said wonderfully pretty things about
his female friends, and, numerous and various as they had been,
declared that on the whole there was more good in them than harm.
"But you are not to take that as advice," he added. "As an
authority I am very untrustworthy. I'm prejudiced in their favor;
I'm an IDEALIST!" Newman listened to him with his impartial smile,
and was glad, for his own sake, that he had fine feelings;
but he mentally repudiated the idea of a Frenchman having discovered
any merit in the amiable sex which he himself did not suspect.
M. de Bellegarde, however, did not confine his conversation
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: noticed that I keep more within doors than others on account of the
cold? Have you ever seen me battling with any one for shade on account
of the heat? Do you not know that even a weakling by nature may, by
dint of exercise and practice, come to outdo a giant who neglects his
body? He will beat him in the particular point of training, and bear
the strain more easily. But you apparently will not have it that I,
who am for ever training myself to endure this, that, and the other
thing which may befall the body, can brave all hardships more easily
than yourself for instance, who perhaps are not so practised. And to
escape slavery to the belly or to sleep or lechery, can you suggest
more effective means than the possession of some powerful attraction,
The Memorabilia |
