Give unto us this day the daily manna Without which, in this desert where we dwell, He must go backward who would most advance.
Dante AlighieriYour fame is as the grass, whose hue comes and goes, and His might withers it by whose power it sprang from the lap of the earth.
Dante AlighieriAnd when he had put his hand on mine with a cheerful look, wherefrom I took courage, he brought me within to the secret things. Here sighs, laments, and deep wailings were resounding through the starless air; wherefore at first I wept thereat. Strange tongues, horrible utterances, words of woe, accents of anger, voices high and faint, and sounds of hands with them, were making a tumult which whirls always in that air forever dark, like the sand when the whirlwind breathes.
Dante Alighieri