| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: young king, waking up.
"My dear darling, while we were asleep the wicked waked, and now they
are forcing us to leave this delightful place."
"What makes you think of wicked people, my treasure? I am sure we
enjoyed the prettiest fete in the world last night--if it were not for
the Latin words those gentlemen will put into our French."
"Ah!" said Mary, "your language is really in very good taste, and
Rabelais exhibits it finely."
"You are such a learned woman! I am so vexed that I can't sing your
praises in verse. If I were not the king, I would take my brother's
tutor, Amyot, and let him make me as accomplished as Charles."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: of your own. The man from Honolulu - miserable, leering creature -
communicated the tale to a rude knot of beach-combing drinkers in a
public-house, where (I will so far agree with your temperance
opinions) man is not always at his noblest; and the man from
Honolulu had himself been drinking - drinking, we may charitably
fancy, to excess. It was to your "Dear Brother, the Reverend H. B.
Gage," that you chose to communicate the sickening story; and the
blue ribbon which adorns your portly bosom forbids me to allow you
the extenuating plea that you were drunk when it was done. Your
"dear brother" - a brother indeed - made haste to deliver up your
letter (as a means of grace, perhaps) to the religious papers;
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: times, so far from boasting of that liberty in which I delight--and
to keep which I freely, too, could die--I rather say, in fear and
trembling, God help us on whom He has laid so heavy a burden as to
make us free; responsible, each individual of us, not only to
ourselves, but to Him and all mankind. For if we fall we shall fall
I know not whither, and I dare not think.
How those old despotisms, the mighty empires of old time, fell, we
know, and we can easily explain. Corrupt, luxurious, effeminate,
eaten out by universal selfishness and mutual fear, they had at last
no organic coherence. The moral anarchy within showed through, at
last burst through, the painted skin of prescriptive order which
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