| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: make fasting, watching and labor of more value than it has in
serving to repress or to kill the flesh and its lusts. Where men
go beyond this, and the fasting, eating, sleeping, watching are
practised beyond the strength of the body, and more than is
necessary to the killing of the lust, so that through it the
natural strength is ruined and the head is racked; then let no
one imagine that he has done good works, or excuse himself by
citing the commandment of the Church or the law of his order. He
will be regarded as a man who takes no care of himself, and, as
far as in him lies, has become his own murderer.
For the body is not given us that we should kill its natural life
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: the muskets and ammunition of the poor fellows those brigands have
rolled into the ditch. These Bretons," added Hulot to Gerard, "will
make famous infantry if they take to rations."
Gudin's emissary started on a run to Fougeres by a wood-road to the
left; the soldiers looked to their arms, and awaited an attack; the
commandant passed along their line, smiling to them, and then placed
himself with his officers, a little in front of it. Silence fell once
more, but it was of short duration. Three hundred or more Chouans,
their clothing identical with that of the late recruits, burst from
the woods to the right with actual howls and planted themselves,
without any semblance of order, on the road directly in front of the
The Chouans |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: and childish little luxuries, set forth pell-mell and pressed at
random on the guests. And here he must make a speech for himself
and his wife, praising their destiny, their marriage, their son,
their daughter-in-law, their grandchildren, their manifold causes
of gratitude: surely the most innocent speech, the old, sharp
contemner of his innocence now watching him with eyes of
admiration. Then it was time for the guests to depart; and they
went away, bathed, even to the youngest child, in tears of
inseparable sorrow and gladness, and leaving the golden bride and
bridegroom to their own society and that of the hired nurse.
It was a great thing for Fleeming to make, even thus late, the
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