| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: of his own castoff griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy.
We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and
ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread
by contagion. From what southern plains comes up the voice of
wailing? Under what latitudes reside the heathen to whom we would
send light? Who is that intemperate and brutal man whom we would
redeem? If anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his
functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even -- for that is the
seat of sympathy -- he forthwith sets about reforming -- the world.
Being a microcosm himself, he discovers -- and it is a true
discovery, and he is the man to make it -- that the world has been
Walden |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: utters furious groans, clenches his nails on the beach, tries to
cling fast to that ashes, supports himself on his elbows in order
to raise himself from that soft sheath, and sobs frantically;
the sand mounts higher. The sand has reached his shoulders, the sand
reaches to his throat; only his face is visible now. His mouth
cries aloud, the sand fills it; silence. His eyes still gaze forth,
the sand closes them, night. Then his brow decreases, a little
hair quivers above the sand; a hand projects, pierces the surface
of the beach, waves and disappears. Sinister obliteration of a man.
Sometimes a rider is engulfed with his horse; sometimes the carter
is swallowed up with his cart; all founders in that strand.
Les Miserables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: Rome next winter, and I shall be dreadfully disappointed if they
don't, for Grace and I are great friends, and the boys very
nice fellows, especially Fred.
Well, we were hardly settled here, when he turned up again,
saying he had come for a holiday, and was going to Switzerland.
Aunt looked sober at first, but he was so cool about it she
couldn't say a word. And now we get on nicely, and are very
glad he came, for he speaks French like a native, and I don't
know what we should do without him. Uncle doesn't know ten
words, and insists on talking English very loud, as if it
would make people understand him. Aunt's pronunciation is
Little Women |
