| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: vain--facts. And so, year after year, was realised that scene which
stands engraved in the frontispiece of his great book--where, in the
little quaint Cinquecento theatre, saucy scholars, reverend doctors,
gay gentlemen, and even cowled monks, are crowding the floor,
peeping over each other's shoulders, hanging on the balustrades;
while in the centre, over his "subject"--which one of those same
cowled monks knew but too well--stands young Vesalius, upright,
proud, almost defiant, as one who knows himself safe in the
impregnable citadel of fact; and in his hand the little blade of
steel, destined--because wielded in obedience to the laws of nature,
which are the laws of God--to work more benefit for the human race
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Koran: tidings and a warner; but most men do not know.
And they say, 'When shall this promise be, if ye do speak the
truth?' say, 'For you is the appointment of a day of which ye shall
not keep back an hour, nor shall ye bring it on!'
And those who misbelieve say, 'We will never believe in this Koran
or in what is before it;' but couldst thou see when the unjust are set
before their Lord, they shall rebut each other in speech.
Those who were thought weak shall say to those who were big with
pride, 'Had it not been for you we should have been believers.'
Those who were big with pride shall say to those who were thought
weak, 'Was it we who turned you away from the guidance after it came
The Koran |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: "The night's as thick as a wolf's jaw," said the voice of Pille-Miche.
"Go on," growled Marche-a-Terre, "and don't talk more than a dead
dog."
"I'm hardly breathing," said the Chouan.
"If the man who made that stone roll down wants his heart to serve as
the scabbard for my knife he'll do it again," said Marche-a-Terre, in
a low voice scarcely heard above the flowing of the river.
"It was I," said Pille-Miche.
"Well, then, old money-bag, down on your stomach," said the other,
"and wriggle like a snake through a hedge, or we shall leave our
carcasses behind us sooner than we need."
The Chouans |
