| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: physiognomy. Just as the jolliest fellow alive, when he joins the
/gendarmerie/, has the countenance of a gendarme, so those who give
themselves over to the habit of lowering their eyes and preserving a
sanctimonious mien clothes them in a livery of hypocrisy which rogues
can affect to perfection.
And besides, bigots constitute a sort of republic; they all know each
other; the servants they recommend and hand on from one to another are
a race apart, and preserved by them, as horse-breeders will admit no
animal into their stables that has not a pedigree. The more the
impious--as they are thought--come to understand a household of
bigots, the more they perceive that everything is stamped with an
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Poems of William Blake by William Blake: Like a reflection in a glass: like shadows in the water
Like dreams of infants, like a smile upon an infants face.
Like the doves voice, like transient day, like music in the air:
Ah! gentle may I lay me down and gentle rest my head.
And gentle sleep the sleep of death, and gently hear the voice
Of him that walketh in the garden in the evening time.
The Lilly of the valley breathing in the humble grass
Answerd the lovely maid and said: I am a watry weed,
And I am very small and love to dwell in lowly vales:
So weak the gilded butterfly scarce perches on my head
Yet I am visited from heaven and he that smiles on all
Poems of William Blake |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: It was for a man of no business and much curiosity to see such
things, not for him who had left his commander in the field,
lodging under the ramparts of his enemies.
Ptolemy, fearing the issue of that war, deserted the confederacy,
but nevertheless sent a convoy with him as far as Cyprus, and at
parting, with much ceremony, wishing him a good voyage, gave him a
very precious emerald set in gold. Lucullus at first refused it,
but when the king showed him his own likeness cut upon it, he
thought he could not persist in a denial, for had he parted with
such open offense, it might have endangered his passage. Drawing a
considerable squadron together, which he summoned, as he sailed by,
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