| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: Statesmen and legislators, standing so completely within the
institution, never distinctly and nakedly behold it.
They speak of moving society, but have no resting-place
without it. They may be men of a certain experience and
discrimination, and have no doubt invented ingenious and
even useful systems, for which we sincerely thank them;
but all their wit and usefulness lie within certain not very
wide limits. They are wont to forget that the world is not
governed by policy and expediency. Webster never goes behind
government, and so cannot speak with authority about it.
His words are wisdom to those legislators who contemplate no
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: sufficiently removed from any other to give privacy to
their conversation.
By tacit agreement, the General ordered the luncheon,
speaking French to the waiter throughout. Divested of his
imposing great-coat, he was seen to be a gentleman of meagre
flesh as well as of small stature. He had the Roman nose,
narrow forehead, bushing brows, and sharply-cut mouth and chin
of a soldier grown old in the contemplation of portraits
of the Duke of Wellington. His face and neck were of a
dull reddish tint, which seemed at first sight uniformly
distributed: one saw afterward that it approached pallor
The Market-Place |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: but there he found a boatman willing to bring him as far as Tours for
three francs, and food during the journey cost him but forty sous.
Five days of walking brought him from Tours to Poitiers, and left him
with but five francs in his pockets, but he summoned up all his
remaining strength for the journey before him.
He was overtaken by night in the open country, and had made up his
mind to sleep out of doors, when a traveling carriage passed by,
slowly climbing the hillside, and, all unknown to the postilion, the
occupants, and the servant, he managed to slip in among the luggage,
crouching in between two trunks lest he should be shaken off by the
jolting of the carriage--and so he slept.
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