| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: its execution in the presence of serious obstacles. It cannot
combine its measures with secrecy, and it will not await their
consequences with patience. These are qualities which more
especially belong to an individual or to an aristocracy; and they
are precisely the means by which an individual people attains to
a predominant position.
If, on the contrary, we observe the natural defects of
aristocracy, we shall find that their influence is comparatively
innoxious in the direction of the external affairs of a State.
The capital fault of which aristocratic bodies may be accused is
that they are more apt to contrive their own advantage than that
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: At all consider this poor clod,
He who the fair occasion sent
Prepared and placed the impediment.
Let him diviner vengeance take -
Give me to sleep, give me to wake
Girded and shod, and bid me play
The hero in the coming day!
XXV - IF THIS WERE FAITH
GOD, if this were enough,
That I see things bare to the buff
And up to the buttocks in mire;
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: the first arrival of the Spaniards; but I have since been
inclined to speculate on the probability of a small change of
climate.
In this northern part of Chile, within the Cordillera, old
Indian houses are said to be especially numerous: by digging
amongst the ruins, bits of woollen articles, instruments of
precious metals, and heads of Indian corn, are not unfrequently
discovered: an arrow-head made of agate, and of
precisely the same form with those now used in Tierra del
Fuego, was given me. I am aware that the Peruvian Indians
now frequently inhabit most lofty and bleak situations; but
The Voyage of the Beagle |
