| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: his house, and the charge of his children. These three good souls,
grave, and uncommunicative folk, seemed to have entered into the idea
which ruled the Marquis' domestic life. And the contrast between their
habits and those of most servants was a peculiarity which cast an air
of mystery over the house, and fomented the calumny to which M.
d'Espard himself lent occasion. Very laudable motives had made him
determine never to be on visiting terms with any of the other tenants
in the house. In undertaking to educate his boys he wished to keep
them from all contact with strangers. Perhaps, too, he wished to avoid
the intrusion of neighbors.
In a man of his rank, at a time when the Quartier Latin was distracted
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . .
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
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
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: up our position side by side, leaning over my bed place.
He had. And the proof of it was his earnest whisper, "The man told you
he hardly dared to give the order."
I understood the reference to be to that saving foresail.
"Yes. He was afraid of it being lost in the setting."
"I assure you he never gave the order. He may think he did,
but he never gave it. He stood there with me on the break of the poop
after the main topsail blew away, and whimpered about our last hope--
positively whimpered about it and nothing else--and the night coming on!
To hear one's skipper go on like that in such weather was enough
to drive any fellow out of his mind. It worked me up into a sort
The Secret Sharer |
