| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Collection of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: had obtained at the post office.
"Gammon? ha! HA!" said he,
with his head on one side.
Ribby explained that her guest
had swallowed a patty-pan.
"Spinach? ha! HA!" said he,
and accompanied her with alacrity.
He hopped so fast that Ribby--
had to run. It was most conspicuous.
All the village could see that
Ribby was fetching the doctor.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: to-morrow, I would measure the ground and load the pistols, so that
you might be killed according to rule. In short, if anybody besides
myself took it into his head to say ill of you in your absence, he
would have to deal with the somewhat nasty gentleman who walks in my
shoes--there's what I call a friendship beyond question. Well, my good
fellow, if you should ever have need of discretion, understand that
there are two sorts of discretion--the active and the negative.
Negative discretion is that of fools who make use of silence,
negation, an air of refusal, the discretion of locked doors--mere
impotence! Active discretion proceeds by affirmation. Suppose at the
club this evening I were to say: 'Upon my word of honor the golden-
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: communicated is a perpetual possession. These best teachers
climb beyond teaching to the plane of art; it is themselves,
and what is best in themselves, that they communicate.
I should never forgive myself if I forgot THE EGOIST. It is
art, if you like, but it belongs purely to didactic art, and
from all the novels I have read (and I have read thousands)
stands in a place by itself. Here is a Nathan for the modern
David; here is a book to send the blood into men's faces.
Satire, the angry picture of human faults, is not great art;
we can all be angry with our neighbour; what we want is to be
shown, not his defects, of which we are too conscious, but
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