| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: "No. Genius!" That was one manifestation of fear, that voice
which whispered that he could not be both great and good, that
genius was the exact combination of those inexplicable grooves
and twists in his mind, that any discipline would curb it to
mediocrity. Probably more than any concrete vice or failing Amory
despised his own personalityhe loathed knowing that to-morrow and
the thousand days after he would swell pompously at a compliment
and sulk at an ill word like a third-rate musician or a
first-class actor. He was ashamed of the fact that very simple
and honest people usually distrusted him; that he had been cruel,
often, to those who had sunk their personalities in himseveral
This Side of Paradise |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: and if all extinct languages, and all intermediate and slowly changing
dialects, had to be included, such an arrangement would, I think, be the
only possible one. Yet it might be that some very ancient language had
altered little, and had given rise to few new languages, whilst others
(owing to the spreading and subsequent isolation and states of civilisation
of the several races, descended from a common race) had altered much, and
had given rise to many new languages and dialects. The various degrees of
difference in the languages from the same stock, would have to be expressed
by groups subordinate to groups; but the proper or even only possible
arrangement would still be genealogical; and this would be strictly
natural, as it would connect together all languages, extinct and modern, by
On the Origin of Species |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: in the wind; and they strained their eyes to watch him to the
last, for they felt that they should look on him no more.
So they rowed on over the long swell of the sea, past
Olympus, the seat of the Immortals, and past the wooded bays
of Athos, and Samothrace the sacred isle; and they came past
Lemnos to the Hellespont, and through the narrow strait of
Abydos, and so on into the Propontis, which we call Marmora
now. And there they met with Cyzicus, ruling in Asia over
the Dolions, who, the songs say, was the son of AEneas, of
whom you will hear many a tale some day. For Homer tells us
how he fought at Troy, and Virgil how he sailed away and
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