| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: addressed them not to God, but to the Archbishop of Tours, who have
once severely rebuked him, threatened him with suspension, and
admonished him before the Chapter for having publicly told certain
lazy people that a good harvest was not due to the grace of God, but
to skilled labour and hard work--a doctrine which smelt of the fagot.
And indeed he was wrong, because the fruits of the earth have need
both of one and the other; but he died in this heresy, for he could
never understand how crops could come without digging, if God so
willed it--a doctrine that learned men have since proved to be true,
by showing that formerly wheat grew very well without the aid of man.
I cannot leave this splendid model of a pastor without giving here one
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: therefore be destroyed as well as the liberty of the press; this
is the necessary term of your efforts; but if your object was to
repress the abuses of liberty, they have brought you to the feet
of a despot. You have been led from the extreme of independence
to the extreme of subjection without meeting with a single
tenable position for shelter or repose.
There are certain nations which have peculiar reasons for
cherishing the liberty of the press, independently of the general
motives which I have just pointed out. For in certain countries
which profess to enjoy the privileges of freedom every individual
agent of the Government may violate the laws with impunity, since
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: famous writer knew nothing of the woman they were committing to
the grave. Glennard could not even remember at what season she
had been buried; but his mood indulged the fancy that it must have
been on some such day of harsh sunlight, the incisive February
brightness that gives perspicuity without warmth. The white
avenues stretched before him interminably, lined with stereotyped
emblems of affliction, as though all the platitudes ever uttered
had been turned to marble and set up over the unresisting dead.
Here and there, no doubt, a frigid urn or an insipid angel
imprisoned some fine-fibred grief, as the most hackneyed words may
become the vehicle of rare meanings; but for the most part the
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