| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: and though avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor,
it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy.
But there is another and greater distinction, for which no truly natural
or religious reason can be assigned, and that is, the distinction of men
into KINGS and SUBJECTS. Male and female are the distinctions of nature,
good and bad the distinctions of heaven; but how a race of men came into
the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species,
is worth inquiring into, and whether they are the means of happiness
or of misery to mankind.
In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology,
there were no kings; the consequence of which was, there were no wars;
Common Sense |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: Haynes has been milling around with a herd of sociologists,
philanthropists, and students of economics. He had some
scheme in the back of his head, but I thought it was just
another of his impractical ideas. It appears that it
wasn't. Between the lot of them they've evolved a savings
and profit-sharing plan that's founded on a kind of
practical universal brotherhood dream. Haynes's millions
are bothering him. If they actually put this thing through
I'll get out. It'll mean that everything I've built up will
be torn down. It will mean that any six-dollar-a-week
girl----"
Fanny Herself |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: carpenters in greasy jackets, the firemen, the stage manager strutting
about with his hat on his head, the supernumeraries sitting among the
hanging back-scenes, the ropes and pulleys, the heterogeneous
collection of absurdities, shabby, dirty, hideous, and gaudy, was
something so altogether different from the stage seen over the
footlights, that Lucien's astonishment knew no bounds. The curtain was
just about to fall on a good old-fashioned melodrama entitled Bertram,
a play adapted from a tragedy by Maturin which Charles Nodier,
together with Byron and Sir Walter Scott, held in the highest esteem,
though the play was a failure on the stage in Paris.
"Keep a tight hold of my arm, unless you have a mind to fall through a
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