| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: and of outcries for remedies which seemed to have a mysteriously remote
bearing on private interest, and were made suspicious by the advocacy
of disagreeable neighbors? Buyers of the Middlemarch newspapers
found themselves in an anomalous position: during the agitation
on the Catholic Question many had given up the "Pioneer"--which had
a motto from Charles James Fox and was in the van of progress--
because it had taken Peel's side about the Papists, and had thus
blotted its Liberalism with a toleration of Jesuitry and Baal;
but they were illsatisfied with the "Trumpet," which--since its
blasts against Rome, and in the general flaccidity of the public
mind (nobody knowing who would support whom)--had become feeble
Middlemarch |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: living a public duty.
[4] Is this an autobiographical touch?
And was this not a noble enactment, that whereas other states are
content to inflict punishment only in cases where a man does wrong
against his neighbour, Lycurgus imposed penalties no less severe on
him who openly neglected to make himself as good as possible? For
this, it seems, was his principle: in the one case, where a man is
robbed, or defrauded, or kidnapped, and made a slave of, the injury of
the misdeed, whatever it be, is personal to the individual so
maltreated; but in the other case whole communities suffer foul
treason at the hands of the base man and the coward. So that it was
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: I'm doom'd to adore the sex, and yet to converse with the only part of
it I despise. This stammer in my address, and this awkward
prepossessing visage of mine, can never permit me to soar above the
reach of a milliner's 'prentice, or one of the duchesses of Drury-lane.
Pshaw! this fellow here to interrupt us.
Enter HARDCASTLE.
HARDCASTLE. Gentlemen, once more you are heartily welcome. Which is
Mr. Marlow? Sir, you are heartily welcome. It's not my way, you see,
to receive my friends with my back to the fire. I like give them a
hearty reception in the old style at my gate. I like to see their
horses and trunks taken care of.
She Stoops to Conquer |
