| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: a day or two at most, and taken down and put up in a few hours; and
every family owned one, or its apartment in one.
In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the
best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but I think
that I speak within bounds when I say that, though the birds of the
air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the savages
their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more than one half
the families own a shelter. In the large towns and cities, where
civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a
shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay an
annual tax for this outside garment of all, become indispensable
Walden |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: other. The conventions and customs which we observe in conversation, and
the opposition of our interests when we have dealings with one another
('the buyer saith, it is nought--it is nought,' etc.), are always obscuring
our sense of truth and right. The sophistry of human nature is far more
subtle than the deceit of any one man. Few persons speak freely from their
own natures, and scarcely any one dares to think for himself: most of us
imperceptibly fall into the opinions of those around us, which we partly
help to make. A man who would shake himself loose from them, requires
great force of mind; he hardly knows where to begin in the search after
truth. On every side he is met by the world, which is not an abstraction
of theologians, but the most real of all things, being another name for
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: Nor are the examples of the employment of costume as a mode of
intensifying dramatic situation less numerous. After slaughter of
Duncan, Macbeth appears in his night-gown as if aroused from sleep;
Timon ends in rags the play he had begun in splendour; Richard
flatters the London citizens in a suit of mean and shabby armour,
and, as soon as he has stepped in blood to the throne, marches
through the streets in crown and George and Garter; the climax of
THE TEMPEST is reached when Prospero, throwing off his enchanter's
robes, sends Ariel for his hat and rapier, and reveals himself as
the great Italian Duke; the very Ghost in HAMLET changes his
mystical apparel to produce different effects; and as for Juliet, a
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