| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: no longer in want of me. Certainly I was not worthy to
replace M. de Treville, of illustrious memory; but they had
promised me, and they had given me; they ought to have
stopped there."
"Is that what dissatisfies you, monsieur? Well I shall make
inquiries. I love justice; and your claim, though made in
military fashion, does not displease me."
"Oh, sire!" said the officer, "your majesty has ill
understood me; I no longer claim anything now."
"Excess of delicacy, monsieur; but I will keep my eye upon
your affairs, and later ---- "
Ten Years Later |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: of the slaves, or to march to Mexico--see if I would go";
and yet these very men have each, directly by their
allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money,
furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who
refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse
to sustain the unjust government which makes the war;
is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards
and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that
degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but
not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment.
Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: which threatened more than a skin-deep injury. Our Jehu had
carelessly driven over a heap of gravel and fairly capsized the
coach, with the wheels in the air and our heels where our heads
should have been. What became of my wits I cannot imagine; they
have always had a perverse trick of deserting me just when they
were most needed; but so it chanced, that in the confusion of our
overthrow I quite forgot that there was a Mrs. Bullfrog in the
world. Like many men's wives, the good lady served her husband as
a steppingstone. I had scrambled out of the coach and was
instinctively settling my cravat, when somebody brushed roughly
by me, and I heard a smart thwack upon the coachman's ear.
Mosses From An Old Manse |
