| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: glancing towards her admirer, now gazing downward at her myrtle
sprig. But Snap, running before me, interrupted her in the midst
of some half-pert, half-playful repartee, by catching hold of her
dress and vehemently tugging thereat; till Mr. Hatfield, with his
cane, administered a resounding thwack upon the animal's skull, and
sent it yelping back to me with a clamorous outcry that afforded
the reverend gentleman great amusement: but seeing me so near, he
thought, I suppose, he might as well be taking his departure; and,
as I stooped to caress the dog, with ostentatious pity to show my
disapproval of his severity, I heard him say: 'When shall I see
you again, Miss Murray?'
Agnes Grey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: before, though he was unjust to Plato himself. It was Proclus whom he
was really reviling; Proclus as Plato's commentator and representative.
The lion had for once got into the ass's skin, and was treated
accordingly. The true Platonic method, that dialectic which the
Alexandrians gradually abandoned, remains yet to be tried, both in
England and in Germany; and I am much mistaken, if, when fairly used, it
be not found the ally, not the enemy, of the Baconian philosophy; in
fact, the inductive method applied to words, as the expressions of
Metaphysic Laws, instead of to natural phenomena, as the expressions of
Physical ones. If you wish to see the highest instances of this method,
read Plato himself, not Proclus. If you wish to see how the same method
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: "and I am afraid you will hardly understand it. Perhaps you will hardly
believe it."
Lord Henry smiled, and leaning down, plucked a pink-petalled daisy from
the grass and examined it. "I am quite sure I shall understand it,"
he replied, gazing intently at the little golden, white-feathered disk,
"and as for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is
quite incredible."
The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac-blooms,
with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air.
A grasshopper began to chirrup by the wall, and like a blue thread
a long thin dragon-fly floated past on its brown gauze wings.
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
