| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: hands of an imperfect successor, an earthly despotism
is not merely a bad form of government, it is the worst
form that is possible.
My works showed what a despot could do with the
resources of a kingdom at his command. Unsuspected
by this dark land, I had the civilization of the nine-
teenth century booming under its very nose! It was
fenced away from the public view, but there it was, a
gigantic and unassailable fact -- and to be heard from,
yet, if I lived and had luck. There it was, as sure a
fact and as substantial a fact as any serene volcano,
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: render obedience than to the duke, since the event always proves the
wisdom of his commands?
Gomez. Well! Well! I am not surprised that you are become as reserved
and monosyllabic as the duke, since you are obliged to be always about his
person; to me, however, who am accustomed to the lighter service of Italy,
it seems strange enough. In loyalty and obedience, I am the same old
soldier as ever; but I am wont to indulge in gossip and discussion; here,
you are all silent, and seem as though you knew not how to enjoy
yourselves. The duke, methinks, is like a brazen tower without gates, the
garrison of which must be furnished with wings. Not long ago I heard him
say at the table of a gay, jovial fellow that he was like a bad spirit-shop,
Egmont |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: were themselves once, when the tree was small, budding twigs; and this
connexion of the former and present buds by ramifying branches may well
represent the classification of all extinct and living species in groups
subordinate to groups. Of the many twigs which flourished when the tree
was a mere bush, only two or three, now grown into great branches, yet
survive and bear all the other branches; so with the species which lived
during long-past geological periods, very few now have living and modified
descendants. From the first growth of the tree, many a limb and branch has
decayed and dropped off; and these lost branches of various sizes may
represent those whole orders, families, and genera which have now no living
representatives, and which are known to us only from having been found in a
On the Origin of Species |
