I fell to thinking about my own life, now so debilitated, and reecting how short this life is, even in health, I began to weep about our wretched sta… - Dante Alighieri

For in every action what is primarily intended by the doer, whether he acts from natural necessity or out of free will, it is the disclosure of his own image. Hence it comes about that every doer, in so far as he does, takes delight in doing; since everything that is desires its own being, and since in action the being of the doer is somehow intensified, delight necessarily follows... Thus, nothing acts unless [by acting] it makes patent its latent self.

"So I saw more than a thousand souls of the ruined
Flee before one who strode across the Styx
Dry-shod as though on land. With his left hand

He cleared the polluted air before his face
And only in that annoyance did he seem tired
I knew assuredly he was sent to us

From Heaven, and I turned my head to regard
The Master - who signaled that I should be mute
And bow before him. Ah, to me he appeared

So full of high disdain! he went to the gate
And opened it by means of a little wand
And there was no resistance. "O race cast out

From Heaven, exiles despised there," he intoned
From that grim threshold, "Why this insolence?
Why do you kick against that Will whose end

Cannot be thwarted, and whose punishments
Many times over have increased your pain?
What use to butt at what the fates dispence?

Remember, Cerberus's throat and chin,
For just this reason, still are stripped of fur."
Then he turned back on the filthy path again

Not speaking a word to us, but with the air
Of one whom other matters must concern
Than those who stand before him. And so, secure

Afer those holy words, we in our turn
Stepped forward toward the city & through the gate,
Entering without dispute. Anxious to learn"

Come on, shake off the covers of this sloth, for sitting softly cushioned, or tucked in bed, is no way to win fame.