Quote of the Week - I

   The breath within my lungs was so exhausted

from climbing, I could not go on; in fact,

as soon as I had reached that stone, I sat.

   "Now you must cast aside your laziness,"

my master said, "for he who rests on down

or under covers cannot come to fame;

   and he who spends his life without renown

leaves such a vestige of himself on earth

as smoke bequeaths to air or foam to water.

   Therefore, get up; defeat your breathlessness

with spirit that can win all battles if

the body's heaviness does not deter it.

   A longer ladder still is to be climbed;

it's not enough to have left them behind;

if you have understood, now profit from it."

   Then I arose and showed myself far better

equipped with breath than I had been before:

"Go on, for I am strong and confident

The Divine Comedy: Inferno by Dante Alighieri (Mandelbaum translation)