| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: affect the whole term of their being. If we were able to go back
to the elements of states, and to examine the oldest monuments of
their history, I doubt not that we should discover the primal
cause of the prejudices, the habits, the ruling passions, and, in
short, of all that constitutes what is called the national
character; we should then find the explanation of certain customs
which now seem at variance with the prevailing manners; of such
laws as conflict with established principles; and of such
incoherent opinions as are here and there to be met with in
society, like those fragments of broken chains which we sometimes
see hanging from the vault of an edifice, and supporting nothing.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: face. He had less appetite, and his moods of depression became
so frequent that he could not hide then even from Henriette. She
asked him once or twice if there were not something the matter
with him, and he laughed--a forced and hurried laugh--and told
her that he had sat up too late the night before, worrying over
the matter of his examinations. Oh, what a cruel thing it was
that a man who stood in the very gateway of such a garden of
delight should be tormented and made miserable by this loathsome
idea!
The disturbing symptom still continued, and so at last George
purchased a medical book, dealing with the subject of the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: Still fixed remaineth as he was before.
Upon this side he fell down out of heaven;
And all the land, that whilom here emerged,
For fear of him made of the sea a veil,
And came to our hemisphere; and peradventure
To flee from him, what on this side appears
Left the place vacant here, and back recoiled."
A place there is below, from Beelzebub
As far receding as the tomb extends,
Which not by sight is known, but by the sound
Of a small rivulet, that there descendeth
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
