| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: you.")
"----to a lot of tea-parties. Take Jack Elder. You think
Jack hasn't got any ideas about anything but manufacturing
and the tariff on lumber. But do you know that Jack is
nutty about music? He'll put a grand-opera record on the
phonograph and sit and listen to it and close his eyes---- Or
you take Lym Cass. Ever realize what a well-informed man
he is?"
"But IS he? Gopher Prairie calls anybody `well-informed'
who's been through the State Capitol and heard about Gladstone."
"Now I'm telling you! Lym reads a lot--solid stuff--
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: passed him by. Men have gone to heaven for smaller things than
that. It was in this spirit, and with this mode of love, that the
saints knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, or stooped to kiss
the leper on the cheek. I have never said one single word to him
about what he did. I do not know to the present moment whether he
is aware that I was even conscious of his action. It is not a
thing for which one can render formal thanks in formal words. I
store it in the treasure-house of my heart. I keep it there as a
secret debt that I am glad to think I can never possibly repay. It
is embalmed and kept sweet by the myrrh and cassia of many tears.
When wisdom has been profitless to me, philosophy barren, and the
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: in bad health for many years, so that their sight-seeing had been on a
modest scale.
She had been to Brussels; she had been to Paris but only for a flying
visit to see an aunt who was ill. She had been to Dresden; there were
masses of pictures she had not seen; however, Lily Briscoe reflected,
perhaps it was better not to see pictures: they only made one
hopelessly discontented with one's own work. Mr Bankes thought one
could carry that point of view too far. We can't all be Titians and we
can't all be Darwins, he said; at the same time he doubted whether you
could have your Darwin and your Titian if it weren't for humble people
like ourselves. Lily would have liked to pay him a compliment; you're
To the Lighthouse |
