| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: the majority of the legislative National Assembly.
In August the constitutive assembly decided not to dissolve until it had
prepared and promulgated a whole series of organic laws, intended to
supplement the Constitution. The party of Order proposed to the
assembly, through Representative Rateau, on January 6, 1849, to let the
Organic laws go, and rather to order its own dissolution. Not the
ministry alone, with Mr. Odillon Barrot at its head, but all the
royalist members of the National Assembly were also at this time
hectoring to it that its dissolution was necessary for the restoration
of the public credit, for the consolidation of order, to put an end to
the existing uncertain and provisional, and establish a definite state
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: two millions are a trifle, but you are losing three or four of
the best years of your life. I say three or four, because you
won't stay longer. Don't forget either, you unhappy man, that
voluntary confinement is a great deal harder to bear than
compulsory. The thought that you have the right to step out in
liberty at any moment will poison your whole existence in prison.
I am sorry for you."
And now the banker, walking to and fro, remembered all this, and
asked himself: "What was the object of that bet? What is the good
of that man's losing fifteen years of his life and my throwing
away two millions? Can it prove that the death penalty is better
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: Your lordship has now heard the cause of my discomposure, and of
my sudden desire to leave your hospitable castle. In other
places I trust we may often meet, but God protect me from ever
spending a second night under that roof!"
Strange as the General's tale was, he spoke with such a deep air
of conviction that it cut short all the usual commentaries which
are made on such stories. Lord Woodville never once asked him if
he was sure he did not dream of the apparition, or suggested any
of the possibilities by which it is fashionable to explain
supernatural appearances as wild vagaries of the fancy, or
deceptions of the optic nerves, On the contrary, he seemed deeply
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