| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged
their powers, and hardened their hearts. And looking across
space with instruments, and intelligences such as we have
scarcely dreamed of, they see, at its nearest distance only
35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope,
our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with
water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with
glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches
of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas.
And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must
be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys
War of the Worlds |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: these no less than those, make Doctor Horace Bianchon doubly dear
to his friends. When a leading clinical practitioner takes a
young man to his bosom, that young man has, as they say, his foot
in the stirrup. Desplein did not fail to take Bianchon as his
assistant to wealthy houses, where some complimentary fee almost
always found its way into the student's pocket, and where the
mysteries of Paris life were insensibly revealed to the young
provincial; he kept him at his side when a consultation was to be
held, and gave him occupation; sometimes he would send him to a
watering-place with a rich patient; in fact, he was making a
practice for him. The consequence was that in the course of time
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: than those heads drying on the stakes under Mr. Kurtz's windows.
After all, that was only a savage sight, while I seemed at one bound
to have been transported into some lightless region of subtle horrors,
where pure, uncomplicated savagery was a positive relief,
being something that had a right to exist--obviously--in the sunshine.
The young man looked at me with surprise. I suppose it
did not occur to him that Mr. Kurtz was no idol of mine.
He forgot I hadn't heard any of these splendid monologues on,
what was it? on love, justice, conduct of life--or what not.
If it had come to crawling before Mr. Kurtz, he crawled as much as the
veriest savage of them all. I had no idea of the conditions, he said:
Heart of Darkness |
