| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: glorious soft green light. Then she went out and picked some of those
purple little ground flowers--you know them--those that keep their faces
close to the ground, but when you turn them up and look at them they are
deep blue eyes looking into yours! She took them with a little earth, and
put them in the crevices between the rocks; and so the room was quite
furnished. Afterwards she went down to the river and brought her arms full
of willow, and made a lovely bed; and, because the weather was very hot,
she lay down to rest upon it.
She went to sleep soon, and slept long, for she was very weak. Late in the
afternoon she was awakened by a few cold drops falling on her face. She
sat up. A great and fierce thunderstorm had been raging, and a few of the
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: when they are known honestly to pay for their
entertainment. But there are unmerciful exactors of
adulation, who withhold the wages of venality; retain
their encomiast from year to year by general
promises and ambiguous blandishments; and when
he has run through the whole compass of flattery,
dismiss him with contempt, because his vein of fiction
is exhausted.
A continual feast of commendation is only to be
obtained by merit or by wealth; many are therefore
obliged to content themselves with single morsels,
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: side of her most famous sons; recognizing that, whatever other nations
may have found in his works, Italy found in them the idea of her unity
and the germs of her renaissance among the nations of Europe. Whilst
it is idle to protest against the world-wide and evil signification of
his name, it may be pointed out that the harsh construction of his
doctrine which this sinister reputation implies was unknown to his own
day, and that the researches of recent times have enabled us to
interpret him more reasonably. It is due to these inquiries that the
shape of an "unholy necromancer," which so long haunted men's vision,
has begun to fade.
Machiavelli was undoubtedly a man of great observation, acuteness, and
The Prince |
