| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: virtues with all else that is truly valuable and within our reach; and the
assurance of such an acquisition cannot fail to render us contented.
Having thus provided myself with these maxims, and having placed them in
reserve along with the truths of faith, which have ever occupied the
first place in my belief, I came to the conclusion that I might with
freedom set about ridding myself of what remained of my opinions. And,
inasmuch as I hoped to be better able successfully to accomplish this work
by holding intercourse with mankind, than by remaining longer shut up in
the retirement where these thoughts had occurred to me, I betook me again
to traveling before the winter was well ended. And, during the nine
subsequent years, I did nothing but roam from one place to another,
Reason Discourse |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: his score."
Lady Bothwell could NOT make herself easy; yet she was sensible
that her sister hurt her own cause by TAKING ON, as the
maidservants call it, too vehemently, and by showing before every
stranger, by manner, and sometimes by words also, a
dissatisfaction with her husband's journey that was sure to come
to his ears, and equally certain to displease him. But there was
no help for this domestic dissension, which ended only with the
day of separation.
I am sorry I cannot tell, with precision, the year in which Sir
Philip Forester went over to Flanders; but it was one of those in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: to play a commercial game with other men and win their money legally.
To impose upon other people was to him a sign of power, a perpetual
proof that he had won the right to despise those feeble beings who
suffer themselves to be preyed upon in this world. Oh! who has ever
truly understood the lamb lying peacefully at the feet of God?--
touching emblem of all terrestrial victims, myth of their future,
suffering and weakness glorified! This lamb it is which the miser
fattens, puts in his fold, slaughters, cooks, eats, and then despises.
The pasture of misers is compounded of money and disdain. During the
night Grandet's ideas had taken another course, which was the reason
of his sudden clemency. He had hatched a plot by which to trick the
Eugenie Grandet |
