| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: ever relish that happiness which was acquired by lessening yours?
MARLOW. By all that's good, I can have no happiness but what's in your
power to grant me! Nor shall I ever feel repentance but in not having
seen your merits before. I will stay even contrary to your wishes; and
though you should persist to shun me, I will make my respectful
assiduities atone for the levity of my past conduct.
MISS HARDCASTLE. Sir, I must entreat you'll desist. As our
acquaintance began, so let it end, in indifference. I might have
given an hour or two to levity; but seriously, Mr. Marlow, do you
think I could ever submit to a connexion where I must appear
mercenary, and you imprudent? Do you think I could ever catch at the
She Stoops to Conquer |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: magnetic power?
"Ah, if I were free, if----"
"Oh! is it only your husband that stands in the way?" the
General exclaimed joyfully, as he strode to and fro in the
boudoir. "Dear Antoinette, I wield a more absolute power than
the Autocrat of all the Russias. I have a compact with Fate; I
can advance or retard destiny, so far as men are concerned, at my
fancy, as you alter the hands of a watch. If you can direct the
course of fate in our political machinery, it simply means (does
it not?) that you understand the ins and outs of it. You shall
be free before very long, and then you must remember your
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces;
but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both
could not be answered--that of neither has been answered fully.
The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because
of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe
to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose
that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the
providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued
through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he
gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due
to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any
Second Inaugural Address |
