| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: but, confident in her own presentiments, her own unfailing hope, she
had the happiness of seeing him come safely through the perils of
childhood, with a constitution that was ever improving, in spite of
the warnings of the Faculty.
Thanks to her constant care, this son had grown and developed so much,
and so gracefully, that at twenty years of age, he was thought a most
elegant cavalier at Versailles. Madame de Dey possessed a happiness
which does not always crown the efforts and struggles of a mother. Her
son adored her; their souls understood each other with fraternal
sympathy. If they had not been bound by nature's ties, they would
instinctively have felt for each other that friendship of man to man,
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: under the ancien regime the religious and civil governments,
widely separated in our days, were intimately connected. To
injure one was inevitably to injure the other. Now, even before
the monarchical idea was shaken the force of religious tradition
was greatly diminished among cultivated men. The constant
progress of knowledge had sent an increasing number of minds from
theology to science by opposing the truth observed to the truth
revealed.
This mental evolution, although as yet very vague, was sufficient
to show that the traditions which for so many centuries had
guided men had not the value which had been attributed to them,
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale: There is nothing to hope for, I am tired,
And heavy as the dead.
Bells
At six o'clock of an autumn dusk
With the sky in the west a rusty red,
The bells of the mission down in the valley
Cry out that the day is dead.
The first star pricks as sharp as steel --
Why am I suddenly so cold?
Three bells, each with a separate sound
Clang in the valley, wearily tolled.
|
