| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: Life offered, or soon beg to lay it down;
Glad to be so dismissed in peace. Can thus
The image of God in Man, created once
So goodly and erect, though faulty since,
To such unsightly sufferings be debased
Under inhuman pains? Why should not Man,
Retaining still divine similitude
In part, from such deformities be free,
And, for his Maker's image sake, exempt?
Their Maker's image, answered Michael, then
Forsook them, when themselves they vilified
Paradise Lost |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who "didn't know what fear was,"
we ought always to add the flea--and put him at the head of the procession.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Judge Driscoll was in bed and asleep by ten o'clock on Friday night,
and he was up and gone a-fishing before daylight in the morning with
his friend Pembroke Howard. These two had been boys together in
Virginia when that state still ranked as the chief and most imposing
member of the Union, and they still coupled the proud and affectionate
adjective "old" with her name when they spoke of her.
In Missouri a recognized superiority attached to any person who
hailed from Old Virginia; and this superiority was exalted to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: the patriots of England deserve no less their
renown in our modern circles, than the Bruces
and Wallaces of Caledonia. If the scenery of
the south be less romantic and sublime than
that of the northern mountains, it must be allowed
to possess in the same proportion superior
softness and beauty; and upon the whole,
we feel ourselves entitled to exclaim with the
patriotic Syrian---``Are not Pharphar and
Abana, rivers of Damascus, better than all the
rivers of Israel?''
Ivanhoe |
