| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: Orange. Our knowledge counsels us not to await the result of a dangerous
experiment.
Egmont. No experiment is dangerous, the result of which we have the
courage to meet.
Orange. You are irritated, Egmont.
Egmont. I must see with my own eyes.
Orange. Oh that for once you saw with mine! My friend, because your
eyes are open, you imagine that you see. I go! Await Alva's arrival, and
God be with you! My refusal to do so may perhaps save you. The dragon
may deem the prey not worth seizing, if he cannot swallow us both.
Perhaps he may delay, in order more surely to execute his purpose; in the
Egmont |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: PROTARCHUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Thirst again is a destruction and a pain, but the effect of
moisture replenishing the dry place is a pleasure: once more, the
unnatural separation and dissolution caused by heat is painful, and the
natural restoration and refrigeration is pleasant.
PROTARCHUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And the unnatural freezing of the moisture in an animal is pain,
and the natural process of resolution and return of the elements to their
original state is pleasure. And would not the general proposition seem to
you to hold, that the destroying of the natural union of the finite and
infinite, which, as I was observing before, make up the class of living
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: heard from the courtyard; men were bringing wood and machinery,
evidently intended for the punishment of the Reformer's messenger.
Christophe's anxiety soon had matter for reflection in the
preparations which were made in the hall before his eyes.
Two coarse and ill-dressed serving-men obeyed the orders of a stout,
squat, vigorous man, who cast upon Christophe, as he entered, the
glance of a cannibal upon his victim; he looked him over and
/estimated/ him,--measuring, like a connoisseur, the strength of his
nerves, their power and their endurance. The man was the executioner
of Blois. Coming and going, his assistants brought in a mattress,
several mallets and wooden wedges, also planks and other articles, the
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