| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: An' when it's time to take the gate,
Tak' ilk his ain.
- Sic neuk beside the southern sea
I soucht - sic place o' quiet lee
Frae a' the winds o' life. To me,
Fate, rarely fair,
Had set a freendly company
To meet me there.
Kindly by them they gart me sit,
An' blythe was I to bide a bit.
Licht as o' some hame fireside lit
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: true origin, explaining, with much lucidity, the passion all men have
for rising, mounting--an instinctive ambition, the perennial
revelations of our destiny.
He displayed the whole universe at a glance, and described the nature
of God Himself circulating in a full tide from the centre to the
extremities, and from the extremities to the centre again. Nature was
one and homogeneous. In the most seemingly trivial, as in the most
stupendous work, everything obeyed that law; each created object
reproduced in little an exact image of that nature--the sap in the
plant, the blood in man, the orbits of the planets. He piled proof on
proof, always completing his idea by a picture musical with poetry.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: forgotten. On the first perusal of this lighter literature, you
will be charmed with the ease, grace, lightness with which
everything is said. On the second, you will be somewhat cured of
your admiration, as you perceive how little there is to say. The
head proves to be nothing but a cunning mask, with no brains inside.
Especially is this true of a book, which I must beg those who have
read it already, to recollect. To read it I recommend no human
being. We may consider it, as it was considered in its time, the
typical novel of the Ancien Regime. A picture of Spanish society,
written by a Frenchman, it was held to be--and doubtless with
reason--a picture of the whole European world. Its French editor
|
