| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge is
often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge.
By long years of patient industry and reading of the
newspapers--for what are the libraries of science but files of
newspapers--a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays them up in his
memory, and then when in some spring of his life he saunters
abroad into the Great Fields of thought, he, as it were, goes to
grass like a horse and leaves all his harness behind in the
stable. I would say to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge, sometimes,--Go to grass. You have eaten hay long
enough. The spring has come with its green crop. The very cows
Walking |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Red Seal by Natalie Sumner Lincoln: and Kent after a pause, added, "While I have not seen Coroner
Penfield I did hear last night what killed Jimmie." Helen
straightened up, one hand pressed to her heart. "It was a lethal
dose of amyl nitrite."
"Amyl nitrite," she repeated. "Yes, I have heard that it is given
for heart trouble. How" - she looked at him queerly. "How is it
administered?"
"By crushing a capsule in a handkerchief and inhaling its fumes "
- he was watching her closely. "The handkerchief Jimmie was seen
to use just before he died was found to contain two or more broken
capsules."
The Red Seal |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: cannot be wholly unknown to you. It is M. Franz de Quesnel,
Baron d'Epinay."
While his wife was speaking, Villefort had narrowly watched
the old man's countenance. When Madame de Villefort
pronounced the name of Franz, the pupil of M. Noirtier's eye
began to dilate, and his eyelids trembled with the same
movement that may be perceived on the lips of an individual
about to speak, and he darted a lightning glance at Madame
de Villefort and his son. The procureur, who knew the
political hatred which had formerly existed between M.
Noirtier and the elder d'Epinay, well understood the
The Count of Monte Cristo |
