| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: strange to those who are acquainted with the variety of movements
performed by the different automata, or moving machines fabricated by
human industry, and that with help of but few pieces compared with the
great multitude of bones, muscles, nerves, arteries, veins, and other
parts that are found in the body of each animal. Such persons will look
upon this body as a machine made by the hands of God, which is
incomparably better arranged, and adequate to movements more admirable
than is any machine of human invention. And here I specially stayed to
show that, were there such machines exactly resembling organs and outward
form an ape or any other irrational animal, we could have no means of
knowing that they were in any respect of a different nature from these
Reason Discourse |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: reveals the secret of his many failures when he describes him as a
secretive man, without force of character--ignoring the human agencies
necessary to carry his schemes into effect, and never insisting on the
fulfilment of his wishes.
The remaining years of Machiavelli's official career were filled with
events arising out of the League of Cambrai, made in 1508 between the
three great European powers already mentioned and the pope, with the
object of crushing the Venetian Republic. This result was attained in
the battle of Vaila, when Venice lost in one day all that she had won
in eight hundred years. Florence had a difficult part to play during
these events, complicated as they were by the feud which broke out
The Prince |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lost Princess of Oz by L. Frank Baum: she be found again. First came the Cowardly Lion, then the Patchwork
Girl riding upon the Woozy, then Betsy Bobbin on her mule Hank, and
finally the Sawhorse drawing the Red Wagon, in which were seated the
Wizard and Dorothy and Button-Bright and Trot. No one was obliged to
drive the Sawhorse, so there were no reins to his harness; one had
only to tell him which way to go, fast or slow, and he understood
perfectly.
It was about this time that a shaggy little black dog who had been
lying asleep in Dorothy's room in the palace woke up and discovered he
was lonesome. Everything seemed very still throughout the great building,
and Toto--that was the little dog's name--missed the customary chatter
The Lost Princess of Oz |
