| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: to be done; and now, when I am called upon to act, I can with difficulty
guard my mind from being again distracted by conflicting doubts. Is it
expedient to seize the others if he escape me? Shall I delay, and suffer
Egmont to elude my grasp, together with his friends, and so many others
who now, and perhaps for to-day only, are in my hands? How! Does
destiny control even thee--the uncontrollable? How long matured! How
well prepared! How great, how admirable the plan! How nearly had hope
attained the goal! And now, at the decisive moment, thou art placed
between two evils; as in a lottery, thou dost grasp in the dark future; what
thou hast drawn remains still unrolled, to thee unknown whether it is a
prize or a blank! (He becomes attentive, like one who hears a noise, and
Egmont |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from I Have A Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr.: the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the
process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of
wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom
by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity
and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to
degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise
to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul
force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro
community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for
many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: the improvements in the neighborhood, deploring the threatened
approach of an electric railway, and screening himself by a series
of reflex adjustments from the imminent risk of any allusion to
the "Letters." Flamel suffered his discourse with the bland
inattention that we accord to the affairs of someone else's
suburb, and they reached the shelter of Alexa's tea-table without
a perceptible turn toward the dreaded topic.
The dinner passed off safely. Flamel, always at his best in
Alexa's presence, gave her the kind of attention which is like a
beaconing light thrown on the speaker's words: his answers seemed
to bring out a latent significance in her phrases, as the sculptor
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