| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: was not hurt. That he should think of my fear at the moment when he
must have been stunned by his fall, moved me so much that I am still
crying; I don't know why. Poor ungainly man! what was he coming for?
what had he to say to me?
I dare not write my thoughts, and shall go to bed joyful, thinking of
all that we would say if we were together. Farewell, fair silent one.
I have not time to scold you for not writing, but it is more than a
month since I have heard from you! Does this mean that you are at last
happy? Have you lost the "complete independence" which you were so
proud of, and which to-night has so nearly played me false?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: of the confederation becomes stronger the more it abandons the
natural state and the acknowledged principles of confederations.
[Footnote b: Thus the province of Holland in the republic of the
Low Countries, and the Emperor in the Germanic Confederation,
have sometimes put themselves in the place of the union, and have
employed the federal authority to their own advantage.]
In America the existing Union is advantageous to all the
States, but it is not indispensable to any one of them. Several
of them might break the federal tie without compromising the
welfare of the others, although their own prosperity would be
lessened. As the existence and the happiness of none of the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: know how it is when you try to recollect a forgotten name.
Usually you help the recall by working for it, by mentally
running over the places, persons, and things with which the word
was connected. But sometimes this effort fails: you feel then
as if the harder you tried the less hope there would be, as
though the name were JAMMED, and pressure in its direction only
kept it all the more from rising. And then the opposite expedient
often succeeds. Give up the effort entirely; think of something
altogether different, and in half an hour the lost name comes
sauntering into your mind, as Emerson says, as carelessly as if
it had never been invited. Some hidden process was started in
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