| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: This sudden reminder so agitated Madame de l'Estorade, coming as it
did unexpectedly, that she was seized with a return of the nervous
trembling her daughter's danger had originally caused, and was forced
to sit down. Seeing her change color, Sallenauve, Nais, and Madame
Octave de Camps ran to her to know if she were ill.
"It is nothing," she answered, addressing Sallenauve; "only that my
little girl reminded me suddenly of the utmost obligation we are under
to you, monsieur. 'Without /him/,' she said, 'you would not have me.'
Ah! monsieur, without your generous courage where would my child be
now?"
"Come, come, don't excite yourself," interposed Madame Octave de
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest: there
And homesick soldiers far away know spring
is in the air;
The tulips come to bloom again, the grass
once more is green,
And every man can see the spot where all his
joys have been.
He sees his children smile at him, he hears the
bugle call,
And only death can stop him now -- he's fight-
ing for them all.
A Heap O' Livin' |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: ALCIBIADES: How in the world, Socrates, do the words of the poet apply to
him? They seem to me to have no bearing on the point whatever.
SOCRATES: Quite the contrary, my sweet friend: only the poet is talking
in riddles after the fashion of his tribe. For all poetry has by nature an
enigmatical character, and it is by no means everybody who can interpret
it. And if, moreover, the spirit of poetry happen to seize on a man who is
of a begrudging temper and does not care to manifest his wisdom but keeps
it to himself as far as he can, it does indeed require an almost superhuman
wisdom to discover what the poet would be at. You surely do not suppose
that Homer, the wisest and most divine of poets, was unaware of the
impossibility of knowing a thing badly: for it was no less a person than
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