| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: reasonable when evils admit of remedy, and then only
when addressed to those from whom the remedy is
expected, yet seems even in hopeless and incurable
distresses to be natural, since those by whom it is
not indulged, imagine that they give a proof of
extraordinary fortitude by suppressing it.
I am one of those who, with the Sancho of Cervantes,
leave to higher characters the merit of suffering
in silence, and give vent without scruple to
any sorrow that swells in my heart. It is therefore
to me a severe aggravation of a calamity, when it is
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: And which alternative, Simmias, do you prefer? Had we the knowledge at our
birth, or did we recollect the things which we knew previously to our
birth?
I cannot decide at the moment.
At any rate you can decide whether he who has knowledge will or will not be
able to render an account of his knowledge? What do you say?
Certainly, he will.
But do you think that every man is able to give an account of these very
matters about which we are speaking?
Would that they could, Socrates, but I rather fear that to-morrow, at this
time, there will no longer be any one alive who is able to give an account
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: Titian culled. Start from the point you have now attained, and perhaps
you may yet paint a worthy picture; you grew weary too soon.
Mediocrity will extol your work; but the true artist smiles. O Mabuse!
O my master!" added this singular person, "you were a thief; you have
robbed us of your life, your knowledge, your art! But at least," he
resumed after a pause, "this picture is better than the paintings of
that rascally Rubens, with his mountains of Flemish flesh daubed with
vermilion, his cascades of red hair, and his hurly-burly of color. At
any rate, you have got the elements of color, drawing, and sentiment,
--the three essential parts of art."
"But the saint is sublime, good sir!" cried the young man in a loud
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