| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Is not the kindred of a common fate a closer tie than that of
birth?
The secret of the young man's character was a high and abstracted
ambition. He could have borne to live an undistinguished life,
but not to be forgotten in the grave. Yearning desire had been
transformed to hope; and hope, long cherished, had become like
certainty, that, obscurely as he journeyed now, a glory was to
beam on all his pathway,--though not, perhaps, while he was
treading it. But when posterity should gaze back into the gloom
of what was now the present, they would trace the brightness of
his footsteps, brightening as meaner glories faded, and confess
Twice Told Tales |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lucile by Owen Meredith: In wretched and paltry intrigues for a cause
As hopeless as is my own life! By the laws
Of a fate I can neither control nor dispute,
I am what I am!"
VIII.
For a while she was mute.
Then she answer'd, "We are our own fates. Our own deeds
Are our doomsmen. Man's life was made not for men's creeds
But men's actions. And, Duc de Luvois, I might say
That all life attests, that 'the will makes the way.'
Is the land of our birth less the land of our birth,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: Castanier had the southern temperament; he had joined the army as a
lad of sixteen, and had followed the French flag till he was nearly
forty years old. As a common trooper, he had fought day and night, and
day after day, and, as in duty bound, had thought of his horse first,
and of himself afterwards. While he served his military
apprenticeship, therefore, he had but little leisure in which to
reflect on the destiny of man, and when he became an officer he had
his men to think of. He had been swept from battlefield to
battlefield, but he had never thought of what comes after death. A
soldier's life does not demand much thinking. Those who cannot
understand the lofty political ends involved and the interests of
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