| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: that she had an understanding above the common standard, "and
believe me mad, till you are obliged to acknowledge the contrary."
The woman was no fool, that is, she was superior to her class; nor
had misery quite petrified the life's-blood of humanity, to which
reflections on our own misfortunes only give a more orderly course.
The manner, rather than the expostulations, of Maria made a slight
suspicion dart into her mind with corresponding sympathy, which
various other avocations, and the habit of banishing compunction,
prevented her, for the present, from examining more minutely.
But when she was told that no person, excepting the physician
appointed by her family, was to be permitted to see the lady at
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Talisman by Walter Scott: swear to thee that the letter is written in all honour and
respect. The song of the nightingale will sooner blight the
rose-bower she loves than will the words of the Soldan offend the
ears of the lovely kinswoman of England."
"Then," said the knight, "I will bear the Soldan's letter
faithfully, as if I were his born vassal--understanding, that
beyond this simple act of service, which I will render with
fidelity, from me of all men he can least expect mediation or
advice in this his strange love-suit."
"Saladin is noble," answered the Emir, "and will not spur a
generous horse to a leap which he cannot achieve. Come with me
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: pretentious efforts made for show, and bourgeois frights at the danger
of the destruction of the world, simultaneous with the carrying on of
the pettiest intrigues and the performance of court comedies by the
world's saviours, who, in their "laisser aller," recall the Day of
Judgment not so much as the days of the Fronde; the official collective
genius of France brought to shame by the artful stupidity of a single
individual; the collective will of the nation, as often as it speaks
through the general suffrage, seeking its true expression in the
prescriptive enemies of the public interests until it finally finds it
in the arbitrary will of a filibuster. If ever a slice from history is
drawn black upon black, it is this. Men and events appear as reversed
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