Try this for size from Friedrich Nietzsche.
We aeronauts of the spirit!— All those brave birds which fly out into the
distance, into the farthest distance—it is certain! somewhere or other they
will be unable to go on and will perch on a mast or a bare cliff-face—and
they will even be thankful for this miserable accommodation! But who could
venture to infer from that, that there was not an immense open space before
them, that they had flown as far as one could fly! All our great teachers
and predecessors have at last come to a stop and it is not with the noblest
or most graceful of gestures that weariness comes to a stop: it will be the
same with you and me! But what does that matter to you and me! Other birds
will fly farther! This insight and faith of ours vies with them in flying up
and away; it rises above our heads and above our impotence into the heights
and from there surveys the distance and sees before it the flocks of birds
which, far stronger than we, still strive whither we have striven, and where
everything is sea, sea, sea!— And whither then would we go? Would we cross
the sea? Whither does this mighty longing draw us, this longing that is
worth more to us than any pleasure? Why just in this direction, thither
where all the sums of humanity have hitherto gone down? Will it perhaps be
said of us one day that we too, steering westward, hoped to reach an
India—but that it was our fate to be wrecked against infinity? Or, my
brothers. Or? —
Friedrich Nietzsche; Dawn
