| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: And obsequies of Troy, have other bards
Not also chanted other high affairs?
Whither have sunk so oft so many deeds
Of heroes? Why do those deeds live no more,
Ingrafted in eternal monuments
Of glory? Verily, I guess, because
The Sum is new, and of a recent date
The nature of our universe, and had
Not long ago its own exordium.
Wherefore, even now some arts are being still
Refined, still increased: now unto ships
 Of The Nature of Things |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: deed of violence as a good jest; but now, that it
interfered with and impeded his own plans, he exclaimed
against the perpetrators, and spoke of the
broken laws, and the infringement of public order
and of private property, in a tone which might have
become King Alfred.
``The unprincipled marauders,'' he said---``were
I ever to become monarch of England, I would
hang such transgressors over the drawbridges of
their own castles.''
``But to become monarch of England,'' said his
 Ivanhoe |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion
to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . .
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . .
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