| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: the customary stone. What we want is something spiritual added to
life. Nothing is so ignoble that Art cannot sanctify it.
ART AND THE HANDICRAFTSMAN
PEOPLE often talk as if there was an opposition between what is
beautiful and what is useful. There is no opposition to beauty
except ugliness: all things are either beautiful or ugly, and
utility will be always on the side of the beautiful thing, because
beautiful decoration is always on the side of the beautiful thing,
because beautiful decoration is always an expression of the use you
put a thing to and the value placed on it. No workman will
beautifully decorate bad work, nor can you possibly get good
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm: king, the third yours.' In the meantime it struck twelve, and the
spirit disappeared, so that the youth stood in darkness. 'I shall
still be able to find my way out,' said he, and felt about, found the
way into the room, and slept there by his fire. Next morning the king
came and said: 'Now you must have learnt what shuddering is?' 'No,' he
answered; 'what can it be? My dead cousin was here, and a bearded man
came and showed me a great deal of money down below, but no one told
me what it was to shudder.' 'Then,' said the king, 'you have saved the
castle, and shall marry my daughter.' 'That is all very well,' said
he, 'but still I do not know what it is to shudder!'
Then the gold was brought up and the wedding celebrated; but howsoever
Grimm's Fairy Tales |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: castle. Looking down at the shabby clothing in which he had disguised
himself, the young nobleman felt ashamed. His black leather belt, his
stout shoes, his ribbed socks, his linsey-woolsey breeches, and his
gray woollen doublet made him look like the clerk of some poverty-
stricken justice. To a noble of the fifteenth century it was like
death itself to play the part of a beggarly burgher, and renounce the
privileges of his rank. But--to climb the roof of the house where his
mistress wept; to descend the chimney, or creep along from gutter to
gutter to the window of her room; to risk his life to kneel beside her
on a silken cushion before a glowing fire, during the sleep of a
dangerous husband, whose snores would double their joy; to defy both
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