| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: 4,000,000 in 1790, had more than tripled in the space of forty
years; and in 1830 it amounted to nearly 13,000,000. *e Changes
of such magnitude cannot take place without some danger.
A society of nations, as well as a society of individuals,
derives its principal chances of duration from the wisdom of its
members, their individual weakness, and their limited number.
The Americans who quit the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean to plunge
into the western wilderness, are adventurers impatient of
restraint, greedy of wealth, and frequently men expelled from the
States in which they were born. When they arrive in the deserts
they are unknown to each other, and they have neither traditions,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: always seemed to me that the Giant needed the little people
more than the Pygmies needed the Giant. For, unless they had
been his neighbors and well wishers, and, as we may say, his
playfellows, Antaeus would not have had a single friend in the
world. No other being like himself had ever been created. No
creature of his own size had ever talked with him, in thunder-
like accents, face to face. When he stood with his head among
the clouds, he was quite alone, and had been so for hundreds of
years, and would be so forever. Even if he had met another
Giant, Antaeus would have fancied the world not big enough for
two such vast personages, and, instead of being friends with
 Tanglewood Tales |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: Desroches was at home; and Monsieur de Trailles was immediately
admitted into his study.
Desroches was a lawyer who had had, like Raffaelle, several manners.
First, possessor of a practice without clients, he had made fish of
every case that came into his net; and he felt himself, in
consequence, little respected by the court. But he was a hard worker,
well versed in all the ins and outs of chicanery, a keen observer, and
an intelligent reader of the movements of the human heart.
Consequently he had made for himself, in course of time, a very good
practice; he had married a rich woman, and the moment that he thought
himself able to do without crooked ways he had seriously renounced
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