| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: through his final combat.
A heart-rending question presented itself.
Predestinations are not all direct; they do not open out in a
straight avenue before the predestined man; they have blind courts,
impassable alleys, obscure turns, disturbing crossroads offering
the choice of many ways. Jean Valjean had halted at that moment
at the most perilous of these crossroads.
He had come to the supreme crossing of good and evil. He had that
gloomy intersection beneath his eyes. On this occasion once more,
as had happened to him already in other sad vicissitudes, two roads
opened out before him, the one tempting, the other alarming.
Les Miserables |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: be supposed to exist a Figure environed, as it were, with six Squares,
and containing eight terminal Points. But in writing this book
I found myself sadly hampered by the impossibility of drawing
such diagrams as were necessary for my purpose; for of course,
in our country of Flatland, there are no tablets but Lines,
and no diagrams but Lines, all in one straight Line
and only distinguishable by difference of size and brightness;
so that, when I had finished my treatise (which I entitled,
"Through Flatland to Thoughtland") I could not feel certain
that many would understand my meaning.
Meanwhile my life was under a cloud. All pleasures palled upon me;
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: slave law, and the malignant bearing of the national government
toward the colored inhabitants of the country. This whole
movement on the part of the states, bears the evidence of having
one origin, emanating from one head, and urged forward by one
power. It was simultaneous, uniform, and general, and looked to
one end. It was intended to put thorns under feet already
bleeding; to crush a people already bowed down; to enslave a
people already but half free; in a word, it was intended to
discourage, dishearten, and drive the free colored people out of
the country. In looking at the recent black law of Illinois, one
is struck dumb with its enormity. It would seem that the men who
My Bondage and My Freedom |
