Ulysses

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses (1842)

Friedrich Schiller on the sublime

"Beauty, under the shape of the divine Calypso, bewitched the virtuous son of Ulysses, and the power of her charms held him long a prisoner in her island. For long he believed he was obeying an immortal divinity, whilst he was only the slave of sense; but suddenly, an impression of the sublime ... seizes him; he remembers that he is called to a higher destiny - he throws himself into the waves, and is free."