| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: His pallid face seemed bloodless, his thin flat nose had the sardonic
expression which we see in a death's head, and his green eyes were
inscrutable; their glance was discreet in meaning just as the thin
closed mouth was discreet in words. The first man seemed on the whole
a good fellow compared with this younger man, who was slashing the air
with a cane, the top of which, made of gold, glittered in the
sunshine. The first man might have cut off a head with his own hand,
but the second was capable of entangling innocence, virtue, and beauty
in the nets of calumny and intrigue, and then poisoning them or
drowning them. The rubicund stranger would have comforted his victim
with a jest; the other was incapable of a smile. The first was forty-
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: them, and in return for this disservice have the face to demand money?
Indeed, I cannot believe you; for I know of a single man, Protagoras, who
made more out of his craft than the illustrious Pheidias, who created such
noble works, or any ten other statuaries. How could that be? A mender of
old shoes, or patcher up of clothes, who made the shoes or clothes worse
than he received them, could not have remained thirty days undetected, and
would very soon have starved; whereas during more than forty years,
Protagoras was corrupting all Hellas, and sending his disciples from him
worse than he received them, and he was never found out. For, if I am not
mistaken, he was about seventy years old at his death, forty of which were
spent in the practice of his profession; and during all that time he had a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: kindness towards the poor, deserted babe. "
The affair being so satisfactorily concluded, Hester Prynne, with
Pearl, departed from the house. As they descended the steps, it
is averred that the lattice of a chamber-window was thrown open,
and forth into the sunny day was thrust the face of Mistress
Hibbins, Governor Bellingham's bitter-tempered sister, and the
same who, a few years later, was executed as a witch.
"Hist, hist!" said she, while her ill-omened physiognomy seemed
to cast a shadow over the cheerful newness of the house. "Wilt
The Scarlet Letter |
