| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: suspicions. And the more to reassure them, he allowed all the French
men-at-arms who were with him in Lombardy to depart, except the
hundred lancers under Mons. di Candales, his brother-in-law. He left
Cesena about the middle of December, and went to Fano, and with the
utmost cunning and cleverness he persuaded the Vitelli and Orsini to
wait for him at Sinigalia, pointing out to them that any lack of
compliance would cast a doubt upon the sincerity and permanency of the
reconciliation, and that he was a man who wished to make use of the
arms and councils of his friends. But Vitellozzo remained very
stubborn, for the death of his brother warned him that he should not
offend a prince and afterwards trust him; nevertheless, persuaded by
The Prince |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: he believed in to the extent of their significance, but that
significance, he was never weary of reminding you, was slender to
the verge of nonentity. Science was true, because it told us
almost nothing. With a few abstractions it could deal, and deal
correctly; conveying honestly faint truths. Apply its means to any
concrete fact of life, and this high dialect of the wise became a
childish jargon.
Thus the atheistic youth was met at every turn by a scepticism more
complete than his own, so that the very weapons of the fight were
changed in his grasp to swords of paper. Certainly the church is
not right, he would argue, but certainly not the anti-church
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: Desirable laughter of maids and the cry of delight of the child.
And the gazer, left behind, stared at the wake and smiled.
By all the towns of the Tevas they went, and Papara last,
The home of the chief, the place of muster in war; and passed
The march of the lands of the clan, to the lands of an alien folk.
And there, from the dusk of the shoreside palms, a column of smoke
Mounted and wavered and died in the gold of the setting sun,
"Paea!" they cried. "It is Paea." And so was the voyage done.
In the early fall of the night, Hiopa came to the shore,
And beheld and counted the comers, and lo, they were forty score:
The pelting feet of the babes that ran already and played,
Ballads |
