| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: Jetter. There may be something in it. I always said as much, and have
often pondered over the matter. It has long been running in my head.
Buyck. All the people run after them.
Soest. No wonder, since they hear both what is good and what is new.
Jetter. And what is it all about? Surely they might 1et every one preach
after his own fashion.
Buyck. Come, sirs! While you are talking, you; forget the wine and the
Prince of Orange.
Jetter. We must not forget him. He's a very wall of defence. In thinking of
him, one fancies, that if one could only hide behind him, the devil himself
could not get at one.
Egmont |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: variety, and grew tired of it. It was like the life of the cloister,
cut short before it had well begun. He drifted on till he reached a
crisis, which is neither spleen nor disgust, but combines all the
symptoms of both. When a human being is transplanted into an
uncongenial soil, to lead a starved, stunted existence, there is
always a little discomfort over the transition. Then, gradually, if
nothing removes him from his surroundings, he grows accustomed to
them, and adapts himself to the vacuity which grows upon him and
renders him powerless. Even now, Gaston's lungs were accustomed to the
air; and he was willing to discern a kind of vegetable happiness in
days that brought no mental exertion and no responsibilities. The
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Russia in 1919 by Arthur Ransome: language with astonishing ease. Balabanova talked about
Italy and seemed happy at last, even in Soviet Russia, to be
once more in a "secret meeting." It was really an
extraordinary affair and, in spite of some childishness, I
could not help realizing that I was present at something that
will go down in the histories of socialism, much like that
other strange meeting convened in London in 1848.
The vital figures of the conference, not counting Platten,
whom I do not know and on whom I can express no
opinion, were Lenin and the young German, Albrecht, who,
fired no doubt by the events actually taking place in his
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