| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Poor and Proud by Oliver Optic: There are a great many persons in the Gordon mansion, as many as
two hundred, I should think. Of course, I cannot stop to
introduce all of them, but there are a few who deserve this
favor.
"Mr. Sneed, I am delighted to see you," said Mrs. Howard, as a
very tall and very slim gentleman, elegantly dressed, approached.
"You do me honor, madam. It is the superlative felicity of my
sublunary existence to congratulate you on this auspicious
occasion," replied Mr. Sneed, as he gently pressed the gloved
hand of the lady.
That sounds just like Master Simon Sneed, only very much
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: received greatness of heart, received courage, received
fortitude? What care I, if I am great of heart, for aught that
can come to pass? What shall cast me down or disturb me? What
shall seem painful? Shall I not use the power to the end for
which I received it, instead of moaning and wailing over what
comes to pass?
XV
If what philosophers say of the kinship of God and Man be
true, what remains for men to do but as Socrates did:--never,
when asked one's country, to answer, "I am an Athenian or a
Corinthian," but "I am a citizen of the world."
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: been bold enough to climb upon the narrow balustrade in the
gallery to look down into the choir, he could have seen nothing
but the tall eight-sided windows of stained glass beyond the high
altar.
At the time of the French expedition into Spain to establish
Ferdinand VII once more on the throne, a French general came to
the island after the taking of Cadiz, ostensibly to require the
recognition of the King's Government, really to see the convent
and to find some means of entering it. The undertaking was
certainly a delicate one; but a man of passionate temper, whose
life had been, as it were, but one series of poems in action, a
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