| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: travel faster than a stage-coach. Its fopperies come down not only as
inside passengers, but in the very basket.
MRS. HARDCASTLE. Ay, your times were fine times indeed; you have been
telling us of them for many a long year. Here we live in an old
rumbling mansion, that looks for all the world like an inn, but that we
never see company. Our best visitors are old Mrs. Oddfish, the
curate's wife, and little Cripplegate, the lame dancing-master; and all
our entertainment your old stories of Prince Eugene and the Duke of
Marlborough. I hate such old-fashioned trumpery.
HARDCASTLE. And I love it. I love everything that's old: old
friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine; and I believe,
She Stoops to Conquer |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: pride in defying.
A man, like many another, of complex nature, he was easily fascinated
by the comfort of luxury, without which he could hardly have lived;
and, in the same way, he clung to the social distinctions which his
principles contemned. Thus his theories as an artist, a thinker, and a
poet were in frequent antagonism with his tastes, his feelings, and
his habits as a man of rank and wealth; but he comforted himself for
his inconsistencies by recognizing them in many Parisians, like
himself liberal by policy and aristocrats by nature.
Hence it was not without some uneasiness that he found himself, on
December 31, 1830, under a Paris thaw, following at the heels of a
Gambara |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: had many irksome privileges; they possessed many onerous rights:
but they maintained public order, they administered justice, they
caused the law to be executed, they came to the relief of the weak,
they conducted the business of the community. In proportion as they
ceased to do these things, the burden of their privileges appeared
more oppressive, and their existence became an anomaly in proportion
as they ceased to do these things." And the Ancien Regime may be
defined as the period in which they ceased to do these things--in
which they began to play the idlers, and expected to take their old
wages without doing their old work.
But in any case, government by a ruling caste, whether of the
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