| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: with external, definite and prescribed decorations, with reading,
praying, fasting, singing, adorning of churches, organ playing,
and such other things as are commanded and observed in monastic
houses and churches, until they also learn to know the faith.
Although there is great danger here, when the rulers, as is now,
alas! the case, busy themselves with and insist upon such
ceremonies and external works as if they were the true works, and
neglect faith, which they ought always to teach along with these
works, just as a mother gives her child other food along with the
milk, until the child can eat the strong food by itself.
XV. Since, then, we are not all alike, we must tolerate such
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Adieu by Honore de Balzac: man, still whistling, but never turning back.
General Philippe de Sucy was thought in the social world to be a very
agreeable man, and above all a very gay one. A few days ago, a lady
complimented him on his good humor, and the charming equability of his
nature.
"Ah! madame," he said, "I pay dear for my liveliness in my lonely
evenings."
"Are you ever alone?" she said.
"No," he replied smiling.
If a judicious observer of human nature could have seen at that moment
the expression on the Comte de Sucy's face, he would perhaps have
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Of Orcus, or by some divine decree
Enter the brute herds, as our Ennius sang,
Who first from lovely Helicon brought down
A laurel wreath of bright perennial leaves,
Renowned forever among the Italian clans.
Yet Ennius too in everlasting verse
Proclaims those vaults of Acheron to be,
Though thence, he said, nor souls nor bodies fare,
But only phantom figures, strangely wan,
And tells how once from out those regions rose
Old Homer's ghost to him and shed salt tears
 Of The Nature of Things |