| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: acquiescent, avoiding discussion; but Monsieur de Mortsauf had too
much sense not to perceive the meaning of my politeness. Presently he
was angry at being always in the right; he grew refractory, his
eyebrows and the wrinkles of his forehead worked, his yellow eyes
blazed, his rufous nose grew redder, as it did on the day I first
witnessed an attack of madness. Henriette gave me a supplicating look,
making me understand that she could not employ on my behalf an
authority to which she had recourse to protect her children. I at once
answered the count seriously, taking up the political question, and
managing his peevish spirit with the utmost care.
"Poor dear! poor dear!" she murmured two or three times; the words
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from United States Declaration of Independence: their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments
long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;
and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed
to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing
the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce
them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw
off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now
the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated
United States Declaration of Independence |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: ranked by British botanists as good and true species.
Finally, then, varieties have the same general characters as species, for
they cannot be distinguished from species,--except, firstly, by the
discovery of intermediate linking forms, and the occurrence of such links
cannot affect the actual characters of the forms which they connect; and
except, secondly, by a certain amount of difference, for two forms, if
differing very little, are generally ranked as varieties, notwithstanding
that intermediate linking forms have not been discovered; but the amount of
difference considered necessary to give to two forms the rank of species is
quite indefinite. In genera having more than the average number of species
in any country, the species of these genera have more than the average
On the Origin of Species |
