| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: to persons who dare not face a difficulty.
"Madame," he said, choosing a moment when Natalie was absent from the
room, "you know, of course, what a family notary is. Mine is a worthy
old man, to whom it would be a sincere grief if he were not entrusted
with the drawing of my marriage contract."
"Why, of course!" said Madame Evangelista, interrupting him, "but are
not marriage contracts always made by agreement of the notaries of
both families?"
The time that Paul took to reply to this question was occupied by
Madame Evangelista in asking herself, "What is he thinking of?" for
women possess in an eminent degree the art of reading thoughts from
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: Lincoln proclaim emancipation--thus doing what he had said twenty-two
months before "I believe I have no lawful right to do."
That interim of anguish and meditation had cleared his sight. Slowly he
had felt his way, slowly he had come to perceive that the preservation of
the Union and the abolition of slavery were so tightly wrapped together
as to merge and be one and the same thing. But even had he known this
from the start, known that the North's bottom cause, the ending of
slavery, rested on moral ground, and that moral ground outweighs and must
forever outweigh whatever of legal argument may be on the other side, he
could have done nothing. "I believe I have no lawful right." There were
thousands in the North who also thus believed. It was only an extremist
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: Y.M. Yes.
O.M. His mind has Free Choice in determining that it would
be RIGHT to try it?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. Then if by reason of his inborn cowardice he simply
can NOT essay it, what becomes of his Free Will? Where is his
Free Will? Why claim that he has Free Will when the plain facts
show that he hasn't? Why content that because he and David SEE
the right alike, both must ACT alike? Why impose the same laws
upon goat and lion?
Y.M. There is really no such thing as Free Will?
What is Man? |
