| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: any kind is us it must rise to the top, and if sufficient to be of comfort to
the readers below, is certain to be hot enough above to injure the bindings.
The surest way to preserve your books in health is to treat them as you
would your own children, who are sure to sicken if confined in an
atmosphere which is impure, too hot, too cold, too damp, or too dry.
It is just the same with the progeny of literature.
If any credence may be given to Monkish legends, books have
sometimes been preserved in this world, only to meet a desiccating
fate in the world to come. The story is probably an invention
of the enemy to throw discredit on the learning and ability
of the preaching Friars, an Order which was at constant war
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare: Lest the requiem lack his right.
And thou, treble-dated crow,
That thy sable gender mak'st
With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st,
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.
Here the anthem doth commence:
Love and constancy is dead;
Phoenix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence.
So they lov'd, as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: education. What is the matter with our universities is that all the
students are schoolboys, whereas it is of the very essence of
university education that they should be men. The function of a
university is not to teach things that can now be taught as well or
better by University Extension lectures or by private tutors or modern
correspondence classes with gramophones. We go to them to be
socialized; to acquire the hall mark of communal training; to become
citizens of the world instead of inmates of the enlarged rabbit
hutches we call homes; to learn manners and become unchallengeable
ladies and gentlemen. The social pressure which effects these changes
should be that of persons who have faced the full responsibilities of
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