| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voice of the City by O. Henry: years of his life. And that the object of it should
make so readily an appointment with him at a street
corner, though it was a step toward his desires, tor-
tured him with misgivings.
Carter did not know the shopgirl. He did not
know that her home is often either a scarcely habit-
able tiny room or a domicile filled to overflowing with
kith and kin. The street-corner is her parlor, the
park is her drawing-room; the avenue is her garden
walk; yet for the most part she is as inviolate mis-
tress of herself in them as is my lady inside her
The Voice of the City |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: of the Court, we ought to spare no pains to discover the truth in
cases of this kind. Our judgment is then guided less by the letter of
the law than by the promptings of our conscience. Whether I seek the
truth here or in my own consulting-room, so long as I find it, all
will be well."
While Popinot was speaking, Rastignac was shaking hands with Bianchon;
the Marquise welcomed the doctor with a little bow full of gracious
significance.
"Who is that?" asked Bianchon in a whisper of Rastignac, indicating
the dark man.
"The Chevalier d'Espard, the Marquis' brother."
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: to any other millions, why expose yourself to this
overwhelming brute force? You do not resist cold and
hunger, the winds and the waves, thus obstinately; you
quietly submit to a thousand similar necessities. You do
not put your head into the fire. But just in proportion as
I regard this as not wholly a brute force, but partly a
human force, and consider that I have relations to those
millions as to so many millions of men, and not of mere
brute or inanimate things, I see that appeal is possible,
first and instantaneously, from them to the Maker of them,
and, secondly, from them to themselves. But if I put my
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
