"'O brothers," I said, "who through a hundred thousand perils have reached the west, to this so little vigil of our senses that remains, do not choose to deny the experience of [what lies] behind the sun, of the world without human beings. Consider your seed [the race you spring from]: you were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.'"

Inferno
(Canto 26, lines 112-120)