| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: cried Lord Henry, dipping his white fingers into a red copper bowl
filled with rose-water. "You are quite perfect. Pray, don't change."
Dorian Gray shook his head. "No, Harry, I have done too many
dreadful things in my life. I am not going to do any more.
I began my good actions yesterday."
"Where were you yesterday?"
"In the country, Harry. I was staying at a little inn by myself."
"My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the country.
There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out
of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not by any means an
easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it.
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: career in which the temptations to malfeasance or dishonesty are
reduced to the minimum. On the other hand, in a country where
intelligence and training have no surety that they are to carry
the day against stupidity and inefficiency, the incentives to
dishonourable conduct are overpowering. The result in our own
political life is that the best men are driven in disgust from
politics, and thus one of the noblest fields for the culture of
the whole man is given over to be worked by swindlers and
charlatans. To an Athenian such a severance of the highest
culture from political life would have been utterly
inconceivable. Obviously the deepest explanation of all this lies
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: Bingley. We may as well wait, perhaps, till the circumstance
occurs before we discuss the discretion of his behaviour
thereupon. But in general and ordinary cases between friend and
friend, where one of them is desired by the other to change a
resolution of no very great moment, should you think ill of that
person for complying with the desire, without waiting to be
argued into it?"
"Will it not be advisable, before we proceed on this subject, to
arrange with rather more precision the degree of importance
which is to appertain to this request, as well as the degree of
intimacy subsisting between the parties?"
Pride and Prejudice |
