The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: to the evolution of organic life: that the degree of individualization
of a people is the self-recorded measure of its place in the great
march of mind.
All life, whether organic or inorganic, consists, as we know, in a
change from a state of simple homogeneity to one of complex
heterogeneity. The process is apparently the same in a nebula or a
brachiopod, although much more intricate in the latter. The
immediate force which works this change, the life principle of
things, is, in the case of organic beings, a subtle something which
we call spontaneous variation. What this mysterious impulse may be
is beyond our present powers of recognition. As yet, the ultimates
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: "I shall decamp," he said; "the house is not habitable. A mother and
daughter talking and arguing like that! Broooouh! Pouah! A fine New
Year's present you've made me, Eugenie," he called out. "Yes, yes, cry
away! What you've done will bring you remorse, do you hear? What's the
good of taking the sacrament six times every three months, if you give
away your father's gold secretly to an idle fellow who'll eat your
heart out when you've nothing else to give him? You'll find out some
day what your Charles is worth, with his morocco boots and
supercilious airs. He has got neither heart nor soul if he dared to
carry off a young girl's treasure without the consent of her parents."
When the street-door was shut, Eugenie came out of her room and went
Eugenie Grandet |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: commendation. Her short-sighted eyes would swim
with pity for a poor mouse in a trap, and she had
been seen once by some boys on her knees in the wet
grass helping a toad in difficulties. If it's true, as
some German fellow has said, that without phos-
phorus there is no thought, it is still more true that
there is no kindness of heart without a certain
amount of imagination. She had some. She had
even more than is necessary to understand suffer-
ing and to be moved by pity. She fell in love un-
der circumstances that leave no room for doubt in
Amy Foster |