| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: attention were the three benefactors of a whole community regarded!
Man was adding a hymn of gratitude to the other chants of evening.
While Madame Graslin walked on with her eyes fastened on the long,
magnificent green pastures, her most cherished creation, the priest
and the mayor did not take their eyes from the groups below, whose
expression it was impossible to misinterpret; pain, sadness, and
regret, mingled with hope, were plainly on all those faces. No one in
Montegnac or its neighborhood was ignorant that Monsieur Roubaud had
gone to Paris to bring the best physician science afforded, or that
the benefactress of the whole district was in the last stages of a
fatal illness. In all the markets through a circumference of thirty
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: There is a tribute of deeds and of words. The departed have already had
the first, when going forth on their destined journey they were attended on
their way by the state and by their friends; the tribute of words remains
to be given to them, as is meet and by law ordained. For noble words are a
memorial and a crown of noble actions, which are given to the doers of them
by the hearers. A word is needed which will duly praise the dead and
gently admonish the living, exhorting the brethren and descendants of the
departed to imitate their virtue, and consoling their fathers and mothers
and the survivors, if any, who may chance to be alive of the previous
generation. What sort of a word will this be, and how shall we rightly
begin the praises of these brave men? In their life they rejoiced their
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: held as testifying that the power of judging aright and of distinguishing
truth from error, which is properly what is called good sense or reason,
is by nature equal in all men; and that the diversity of our opinions,
consequently, does not arise from some being endowed with a larger share
of reason than others, but solely from this, that we conduct our thoughts
along different ways, and do not fix our attention on the same objects.
For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite
is rightly to apply it. The greatest minds, as they are capable of the
highest excellences, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations; and
those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided
they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run,
Reason Discourse |
