| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lady Susan by Jane Austen: your ladyship so often alludes! from whence arose so astonishing a
misconception of your daughter's feelings! Did you not know that she
disliked Sir James?" "I knew that he was not absolutely the man she would
have chosen, but I was persuaded that her objections to him did not arise
from any perception of his deficiency. You must not question me, however,
my dear sister, too minutely on this point," continued she, taking me
affectionately by the hand; "I honestly own that there is something to
conceal. Frederica makes me very unhappy! Her applying to Mr. De Courcy
hurt me particularly." "What is it you mean to infer," said I, " by this
appearance of mystery? If you think your daughter at all attached to
Reginald, her objecting to Sir James could not less deserve to be attended
Lady Susan |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: rage (not for very long); of a poker flung once (not very far),
which stilled that particular storm into the dumb and awful silence
which follows a thunder-clap. And all these scenes of violence
came and went accompanied by the unrefined noise of deep
vociferations proceeding from a man wounded in his paternal pride,
declaring himself obviously accursed since one of his kids was a
"slobbering idjut and the other a wicked she-devil." It was of her
that this had been said many years ago.
Mrs Verloc heard the words again in a ghostly fashion, and then the
dreary shadow of the Belgravian mansion descended upon her
shoulders. It was a crushing memory, an exhausting vision of
The Secret Agent |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: Now it is so; 'twas so of old.
Its name--what passes not away;
So, in their beautiful array,
Things form and never know decay.
How know I that it is so with all the beauties of existing things? By
this (nature of the Tao).
22. 1. The partial becomes complete; the crooked, straight; the empty,
full; the worn out, new. He whose (desires) are few gets them; he
whose (desires) are many goes astray.
2. Therefore the sage holds in his embrace the one thing (of
humility), and manifests it to all the world. He is free from self-
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