| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: contrary, have very often been wanting in one or two or all of the
qualities these words imply, I should expect to find a good many
doctrines current in the schools which I should be obliged to call
foolish, cowardly, and false.
- So you would abuse other people's beliefs, Sir, and yet not tell
us your own creed! - said the divinity-student, coloring up with a
spirit for which I liked him all the better.
- I have a creed, - I replied; - none better, and none shorter. It
is told in two words, - the two first of the Paternoster. And when
I say these words I mean them. And when I compared the human will
to a drop in a crystal, and said I meant to DEFINE moral
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: Always calm and self-controlled, he gave no sign in the presence
of others of the anxiety that weighed so heavily upon him. Very
likely the visitors who saw him during those days thought that he
hardly realized the plight of the city; yet an inmate of the
White House, passing through the President's office when the
day's work was done and he imagined himself alone, saw him pause
in his absorbed walk up and down the floor, and gaze long out of
the window in the direction from which the troops were expected
to appear. Then, unconscious of any hearer, and as if the words
were wrung from him by anguish, he exclaimed, "Why don't they
come, why don't they come
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: analyzing and controlling the various interests proclaimed and
supported by so many clever men. In fact, his misfortune was that of
most other ministers who have passed the prime of life; he trimmed and
shuffled under all his difficulties,--with journalism, which at this
period it was thought advisable to repress in an underhand way rather
than fight openly; with financial as well as labor questions; with the
clergy as well as with that other question of the public lands; with
liberalism as with the Chamber. After manoeuvering his way to power in
the course of seven years, the minister believed that he could manage
all questions of administration in the same way. It is so natural to
think we can maintain a position by the same methods which served us
|
