| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: primos civitatis, miserunt, qui dicerent se suaque omnia in fidem atque
potestatem populi Romani permittere, neque se cum reliquis Belgis
consensisse neque contra populum Romanum coniurasse, paratosque esse et
obsides dare et imperata facere et oppidis recipere et frumento ceterisque
rebus iuvare; reliquos omnes Belgas in armis esse, Germanosque qui cis
Rhenum incolant sese cum his coniunxisse, tantumque esse eorum omnium
furorem ut ne Suessiones quidem, fratres consanguineosque suos, qui eodem
iure et isdem legibus utantur, unum imperium unumque magistratum cum ipsis
habeant, deterrere potuelint quin cum iis consentirent.
Cum ab iis quaereret quae civitates quantaeque in armis essent et quid
in bello possent, sic reperiebat: plerosque Belgos esse ortos a Germanis
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: "I can explain it. It's another confession. When the thing was new
and hot, and the town made a plan to ride him on a rail, my
conscience hurt me so that I couldn't stand it, and I went privately
and gave him notice, and he got out of the town and stayed out till
it was safe to come back."
"Edward! If the town had found it out--"
"DON'T! It scares me yet, to think of it. I repented of it the
minute it was done; and I was even afraid to tell you lest your face
might betray it to somebody. I didn't sleep any that night, for
worrying. But after a few days I saw that no one was going to
suspect me, and after that I got to feeling glad I did it. And I
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: comes the life of suffering, whose tortures create a thirst for love.
Next the life of love and devotion to the creature, teaching devotion
to the Creator,--a life where the virtues of love, its martyrdoms, its
joys followed by sorrows, its angelic hopes, its patience, its
resignation, excite an appetite for things divine. Then follows the
life which seeks in silence the traces of the Word; in which the soul
grows humble and charitable. Next the life of longing; and lastly, the
life of prayer. In that is the noonday sun; there are the flowers,
there the harvest!
"The virtues we acquire, which develop slowly within us, are the
invisible links that bind each one of our existences to the others,--
Seraphita |
