| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: maple-leaves is identical, despite the variety of their
configurations. And if I set myself to develop the idea, I could
show to what a degree all three brothers shared in that passionate
enthusiasm without which it would have been impossible for one of
them to turn into the poet Lyoff Tolstoy. The difference of their
attitude to life was determined by the difference of the ways in
which they turned their backs on their unfulfilled dreams.
Nikolái quenched his ardor in skeptical derision, Lyoff
renounced his unrealized dreams with silent reproach, and
Sergéi with morbid misanthropy. The greater the original
store of love in such characters, the stronger, if only for a time,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: and without success. But on the next, being the day-week
of their previous meeting, he saw a female shape floating
along the ridge and the outline of a young man ascending
from the valley. They met in the little ditch encircling
the tumulus--the original excavation from which it
had been thrown up by the ancient British people.
The reddleman, stung with suspicion of wrong to Thomasin,
was aroused to strategy in a moment. He instantly left
the bush and crept forward on his hands and knees.
When he had got as close as he might safely venture without
discovery he found that, owing to a cross-wind, the
Return of the Native |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: To the immortals
As though they were men,
And did in the great,
What the best, in the small,
Does or might do.
Be the man that is noble,
Both helpful and good.
Unweariedly forming
The right and the useful,
A type of those beings
Our mind hath foreshadow'd!
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