| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: beware. The penknife and the axe should respect each other; for
they were wrought from the same steel: but the penknife will not be
wise in trying to fell trees. Let them accept their own position,
not in conceit and arrogance, but in fear and trembling; and see if
they cannot play the man therein, and save their own class; and with
it, much which it has needed many centuries to accumulate and to
organise, and without which no nation has yet existed for a single
century. They are no more like the old French noblesse, than are
the commercial class like the old French bourgeoisie, or the
labouring like the old French peasantry. Let them prove that fact
by their deeds during the next generation; or sink into the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Poems of William Blake by William Blake: And I complaind in the mild air, because I fade away.
And lay me down in thy cold bed, and leave my shining lot.
Queen of the vales, the matron Clay answered: I heard thy sighs.
And all thy moans flew o'er my roof, but I have call'd them down:
Wilt thou O Queen enter my house, tis given thee to enter,
And to return: fear nothing, enter with thy virgin feet.
IV.
The eternal gates terrific porter lifted the northern bar:
Thel enter'd in & saw the secrets of the land unknown;
She saw the couches of the dead, & where the fibrous roots
Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists:
Poems of William Blake |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: hair on his head, standing in his threadbare jacket and muddy boots--"
"What a picture of a Dun!" cried Lousteau.
"--standing before the Count, that image of flaunting Debt, in his
blue flannel dressing-gown, slippers worked by some Marquise or other,
trousers of white woolen stuff, and a dazzling shirt? There he stood,
with a gorgeous cap on his black dyed hair, playing with the tassels
at his waist--"
" 'Tis a bit of genre for anybody who knows what the pretty little
morning room, hung with silk and full of valuable paintings, where
Maxime breakfasts," said Nathan. "You tread on a Smyrna carpet, you
admire the sideboards filled with curiosities and rarities fit to make
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