| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: gone mad about her.
"I have often accompanied him," said Daniel, "to the opera. He would
make me run through the streets as far as her horses that he might see
the princess through the window of her coupe."
"Well, there you have a topic all ready for you," said Blondet,
smiling. "This is the very woman you need; she'll initiate you most
gracefully into the mysteries of elegance; but take care! she has
wasted many fortunes. The beautiful Diane is one of those spendthrifts
who don't cost a penny, but for whom a man spends millions. Give
yourself up to her, body and soul, if you choose; but keep your money
in your hand, like the old fellow in Girodet's 'Deluge.'"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: corruptions of good old Teutonic names, which our ancestors may have
carried in the German Forest, before an Englishman set foot on
British soil; from which he will rise with the comfortable feeling
that we English-speaking men, from the highest to the lowest, are
literally kinsmen. Nay, so utterly made up now is the old blood-
feud between Norseman and Englishman, between the descendants of
those who conquered and those who were conquered, that in the
children of our Prince of Wales, after 800 years, the blood of
William of Normandy is mingled with the blood of the very Harold who
fell at Hastings. And so, by the bitter woes which followed the
Norman conquest was the whole population, Dane, Angle, and Saxon,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of free
institutions. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the
inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious
belief. I do not know whether all the Americans have a sincere
faith in their religion, for who can search the human heart? but
I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the
maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not
peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to
the whole nation, and to every rank of society.
In the United States, if a political character attacks a
sect, this may not prevent even the partisans of that very sect
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