| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: and which he hid so cautiously that neither his wife nor the servant
who watched him had ever been able to discover its hiding-place.
The evening before Gaudissart reached Vouvray Madame Margaritis had
had more difficulty than usual in deceiving her husband, whose mind
happened to be uncommonly lucid.
"I really don't know how I shall get through to-morrow," she had said
to Madame Vernier. "Would you believe it, the good-man insists on
watching his two casks of wine. He has worried me so this whole day,
that I had to show him two full puncheons. Our neighbor, Pierre
Champlain, fortunately had two which he had not sold. I asked him to
kindly let me have them rolled into our cellar; and oh, dear! now that
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: nor observed, for human conditions do not permit it, it is necessary
for him to be sufficiently prudent that he may know how to avoid the
reproach of those vices which would lose him his state; and also to
keep himself, if it be possible, from those which would not lose him
it; but this not being possible, he may with less hesitation abandon
himself to them. And again, he need not make himself uneasy at
incurring a reproach for those vices without which the state can only
be saved with difficulty, for if everything is considered carefully,
it will be found that something which looks like virtue, if followed,
would be his ruin; whilst something else, which looks like vice, yet
followed brings him security and prosperity.
The Prince |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale: The laughing shadowy girl who stood
At midnight by the flowering tree,
With eyes that love had made as bright
As the trembling stars of the summer night.
Turn from me now, but always hear
The muted laughter in the dew
Of that one year of youth we had,
The only youth we ever knew --
Turn from me now, or you will see
What other years have done to me.
Water Lilies
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