| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: left in its blind rage.
I don't deny that there was a pang in it, - yes, a stab; but there
was a prayer, too, - the "Amen" belonged to that. - Also, a vision
of a four-story brick house, nicely furnished, - I actually saw
many specific articles, - curtains, sofas, tables, and others, and
could draw the patterns of them at this moment, - a brick house, I
say, looking out on the water, with a fair parlor, and books and
busts and pots of flowers and bird-cages, all complete; and at the
window, looking on the water, two of us. - "Male and female created
He them." - These two were standing at the window, when a smaller
shape that was playing near them looked up at me with such a look
 The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: see or hear or think of anything, they are slow in assigning the right
objects to the right impressions--in their stupidity they confuse them, and
are apt to see and hear and think amiss--and such men are said to be
deceived in their knowledge of objects, and ignorant.
THEAETETUS: No man, Socrates, can say anything truer than that.
SOCRATES: Then now we may admit the existence of false opinion in us?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And of true opinion also?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: We have at length satisfactorily proven beyond a doubt there are
these two sorts of opinion?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: of the whole of it. At all costs nothing must frustrate it.
"Listen, my dear," she said. "Let us reason. M. le Marquis is away
and will not be back until to-morrow."
"True. And I know where he has gone - or at least whom he has gone
with. Mon Dieu, and the drab has a father and a lout of a fellow
who intends to make her his wife, and neither of them chooses to do
anything. I suppose they agree with you, madame, that a great
gentleman must have his little distractions." Her contempt was as
scorching as a thing of fire. "However, madame, you were about to
say?"
"That on the day after to-morrow you are returning to Gavrillac.
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