| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: where those who are willing to make virtue their study and delight
fail somehow in ability to add to the glory of their fatherland.[4]
That lesson the legislator laid to heart, and in Sparta he enforced,
as a matter of public duty, the practice of virtue by every citizen.
And so it is that, just as man differs from man in some excellence,
according as he cultivates or neglects to cultivate it, this city of
Sparta, with good reason, outshines all other states in virtue; since
she, and she alone, as made the attainment of a high standard of noble
living a public duty.
[4] Is this an autobiographical touch?
And was this not a noble enactment, that whereas other states are
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: for permission to release the young girl for two hours from her dull
labors. Augustine was thus able to make her way through the crowd to
see the crowned work. A fit of trembling shook her like an aspen leaf
as she recognized herself. She was terrified, and looked about her to
find Madame Roguin, from whom she had been separated by a tide of
people. At that moment her frightened eyes fell on the impassioned
face of the young painter. She at once recalled the figure of a
loiterer whom, being curious, she had frequently observed, believing
him to be a new neighbor.
"You see how love has inspired me," said the artist in the timid
creature's ear, and she stood in dismay at the words.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: mansion. It was a face to which almost any door would have
opened of its own accord.
The young girl, so fresh, so unconventional, and yet so orderly
and obedient to common rules, as you at once recognized her to
be, was widely in contrast, at that moment, with everything about
her. The sordid and ugly luxuriance of gigantic weeds that grew
in the angle of the house, and the heavy projection that overshadowed
her, and the time-worn framework of the door,--none of these things
belonged to her sphere. But, even as a ray of sunshine, fall into
what dismal place it may, instantaneously creates for itself a
propriety in being there, so did it seem altogether fit that the
House of Seven Gables |
