| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: went by without a solitary walk, in which she might indulge in all
the delight of unpleasant recollections.
Mr. Darcy's letter she was in a fair way of soon knowing by
heart. She studied every sentence; and her feelings towards its
writer were at times widely different. When she remembered the
style of his address, she was still full of indignation; but when she
considered how unjustly she had condemned and upbraided him,
her anger was turned against herself; and his disappointed
feelings became the object of compassion. His attachment
excited gratitude, his general character respect; but she could
not approve him; nor could she for a moment repent her refusal,
Pride and Prejudice |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: great thing, and should be rearranged on sanitary principles; but
my heart and all my interest are with the dweller, that ancient of
days and day-old infant man.
R. L. S.
An excellent touch is p. 584. 'By instinct or design he eschews
what demands constructive patience.' I believe it is both; my
theory is that literature must always be most at home in treating
movement and change; hence I look for them.
Letter: TO THOMAS STEVENSON
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH,] OCTOBER 28, 1885.
MY DEAREST FATHER, - Get the November number of TIME, and you will
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: Peter Schlimmel's sad loss, and how perfectly possible it is to
make bits of discontinuous distance take the place effectively of
continuous space.
Far Eastern pictures are epigrams rather than descriptions.
They present a bit of nature with the terseness of a maxim of
La Rochefoucault, and they delight as aphorisms do by their insight
and the happy conciseness of its expression. Few aphorisms are
absolutely true, but then boldness more than makes up for what they
lack in verity. So complex a subject is life that to state a truth
with all its accompanying limitations is to weaken it at once.
Exceptions, while demonstrating the rule, do not tend to emphasize it.
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