| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: Luydens'."
The words gave him an electric shock, for few were
the rebellious spirits who would have dared to call the
stately home of the van der Luydens gloomy. Those
privileged to enter it shivered there, and spoke of it as
"handsome." But suddenly he was glad that she had
given voice to the general shiver.
"It's delicious--what you've done here," he repeated.
"I like the little house," she admitted; "but I suppose
what I like is the blessedness of its being here, in my
own country and my own town; and then, of being
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: eastern Tartars think that there is nothing west beyond Thibet.
"The world ends there," say they; "beyond there is nothing but a
shoreless sea." It is unmitigated East where they live.
We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and
literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as
into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. The
Atlantic is a Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have
had an opportunity to forget the Old World and its institutions.
If we do not succeed this time, there is perhaps one more chance
for the race left before it arrives on the banks of the Styx; and
that is in the Lethe of the Pacific, which is three times as
Walking |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: the standard opinions of that time in morals. I doubt whether
men were more virtuous in aristocratic ages than in others; but
they were incessantly talking of the beauties of virtue, and its
utility was only studied in secret. But since the imagination
takes less lofty flights and every man's thoughts are centred in
himself, moralists are alarmed by this idea of self-sacrifice,
and they no longer venture to present it to the human mind. They
therefore content themselves with inquiring whether the personal
advantage of each member of the community does not consist in
working for the good of all; and when they have hit upon some
point on which private interest and public interest meet and
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