Call to mind from whence we sprang: / Ye were not form’d to live the life of brutes / But virtue to pursue and knowledge high.
- Source
- Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto 26, trans. H. F. Cary
- Written
- c. 1308–1314
About this quotation
Ulysses speaks the lines to his crew in Dante’s version of his last voyage, urging them to sail past the Pillars of Hercules. The voyage ends in shipwreck, and Dante places Ulysses in hell among the false counsellors.