| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: Thucydides we may discern that natural reaction against the
intrusion of didactic and theological considerations into the
sphere of the pure intellect, the spirit of which may be found in
the Euripidean treatment of tragedy and the later schools of art,
as well as in the Platonic conception of science.
History, no doubt, has splendid lessons for our instruction, just
as all good art comes to us as the herald of the noblest truth.
But, to set before either the painter or the historian the
inculcation of moral lessons as an aim to be consciously pursued,
is to miss entirely the true motive and characteristic both of art
and history, which is in the one case the creation of beauty, in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare: Or what you will command me will I do,
So well I know my duty to my elders.
KATHERINA.
Of all thy suitors here I charge thee tell
Whom thou lov'st best: see thou dissemble not.
BIANCA.
Believe me, sister, of all the men alive
I never yet beheld that special face
Which I could fancy more than any other.
KATHERINA.
Minion, thou liest. Is't not Hortensio?
The Taming of the Shrew |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: but analytic process -- and I have gladly omitted it since, though
most housewives earnestly assured me that safe and wholesome bread
without yeast might not be, and elderly people prophesied a speedy
decay of the vital forces. Yet I find it not to be an essential
ingredient, and after going without it for a year am still in the
land of the living; and I am glad to escape the trivialness of
carrying a bottleful in my pocket, which would sometimes pop and
discharge its contents to my discomfiture. It is simpler and more
respectable to omit it. Man is an animal who more than any other
can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances. Neither did I
put any sal-soda, or other acid or alkali, into my bread. It would
Walden |
