| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale: We live a little ere the charm is spent;
This night is ours, of all the golden nights,
The pavement an enchanted palace floor,
And Youth the player on the viol, who sent
A strain of music thru an open door.
A WINTER BLUEJAY
CRISPLY the bright snow whispered,
Crunching beneath our feet;
Behind us as we walked along the parkway,
Our shadows danced,
Fantastic shapes in vivid blue.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: place the idea of this chapter in stronger relief. In a
democratic society like that of the United States, where fortunes
are scanty and insecure, everybody works, and work opens a way to
everything: this has changed the point of honor quite round, and
has turned it against idleness. I have sometimes met in America
with young men of wealth, personally disinclined to all laborious
exertion, but who had been compelled to embrace a profession.
Their disposition and their fortune allowed them to remain
without employment; public opinion forbade it, too imperiously to
be disobeyed. In the European countries, on the contrary, where
aristocracy is still struggling with the flood which overwhelms
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: doing them, there obedience ends, and that duty is annulled. Here
a man must say as St. Peter says to the rulers of the Jews: "We
ought to obey God rather than men." He did not say: "We must not
obey men"; for that would be wrong; but he said: "God rather than
men." Thus, if a prince desired to go to war, and his cause was
manifestly unrighteous, we should not follow nor help him at all;
since God has commanded that we shall not kill our neighbor, nor
do him injustice. Likewise, if he bade us bear false witness,
steal, lie or deceive and the like. Here we ought rather give up
goods, honor, body, and life, that God's Commandments may stand.
The four preceding Commandments have their works in the
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