| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: craze, a decade before, and there was a story that he'd agreed to pay
five years' taxes on all the neighboring cottages if the owners would
have their roofs thatched with straw. Perhaps their refusal took the
heart out of his plan to Found a Family--he went into an immediate
decline. His children sold his house with the black wreath still on the
door. Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always
been obstinate about being peasantry.
After half an hour, the sun shone again, and the grocer's automobile
rounded Gatsby's drive with the raw material for his servants' dinner--I
felt sure he wouldn't eat a spoonful. A maid began opening the upper
windows of his house, appeared momentarily in each, and, leaning from a
The Great Gatsby |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: enough. The spring has come with its green crop. The very cows
are driven to their country pastures before the end of May;
though I have heard of one unnatural farmer who kept his cow in
the barn and fed her on hay all the year round. So, frequently,
the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge treats its
cattle.
A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but
beautiful--while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse
than useless, besides being ugly. Which is the best man to deal
with--he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is
extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really
Walking |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: perhaps, is why we love them so passionately! Such was the Comtesse de
Lanty.
Filippo, Marianina's brother, inherited, as did his sister, the
Countess' marvelous beauty. To tell the whole story in a word, that
young man was a living image of Antinous, with somewhat slighter
proportions. But how well such a slender and delicate figure accords
with youth, when an olive complexion, heavy eyebrows, and the gleam of
a velvety eye promise virile passions, noble ideas for the future! If
Filippo remained in the hearts of young women as a type of manly
beauty, he likewise remained in the memory of all mothers as the best
match in France.
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