| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: For the strong arm of that oppressive power did not frighten me into doing
wrong; and when we came out of the rotunda the other four went to Salamis
and fetched Leon, but I went quietly home. For which I might have lost my
life, had not the power of the Thirty shortly afterwards come to an end.
And many will witness to my words.
Now do you really imagine that I could have survived all these years, if I
had led a public life, supposing that like a good man I had always
maintained the right and had made justice, as I ought, the first thing? No
indeed, men of Athens, neither I nor any other man. But I have been always
the same in all my actions, public as well as private, and never have I
yielded any base compliance to those who are slanderously termed my
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: his eyes to heaven resignedly. "I came," he said, "to ask you to lend
me the 'Register of Bishops.' You are the only man in Tours I know who
has a copy."
"Take it out of my library," replied Birotteau, reminded by the
canon's words of the greatest happiness of his life.
The canon passed into the library and stayed there while the vicar
dressed. Presently the breakfast bell rang, and the gouty vicar
reflected that if it had not been for Troubert's visit he would have
had no fire to dress by. "He's a kind man," thought he.
The two priests went downstairs together, each armed with a huge folio
which they laid on one of the side tables in the dining-room.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: form: the scarlet letter endowed with life! The mother herself
-- as if the red ignominy were so deeply scorched into her brain
that all her conceptions assumed its form -- had carefully
wrought out the similitude, lavishing many hours of morbid
ingenuity to create an analogy between the object of her
affection and the emblem of her guilt and torture. But, in
truth, Pearl was the one as well as the other; and only in
consequence of that identity had Hester contrived so perfectly to
represent the scarlet letter in her appearance.
The Scarlet Letter |
