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Dante – The Divine Comedy – Purgatorio XVII

'Neither creator, nor creature was ever'
He then began, 'my son, without love,
Either natural or rational; you know that.
 
Natural love is always without error,
But the other kind may err, in the wrong object,
Or else through too much or too little vigour.
 
While it is directed to the primal good,
And keeps to its limits in relation to the secondary,
It cannot be the occasion of sinful pleasure;
 
But when it is twisted to evil, or seeks the good
With more or with less concern than it ought to have,
The creature is working against the creator.
 
So you  see that love is the seed of every virtue that is in you
And of every action deserving of punishment.

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O faculty of imagination, which sometimes
Takes us so far out of ourselves, that a man
Does not notice though a thousand trumpets sound around him,

Who moves you, when the senses offer nothing?
A light which takes its shape in heaven moves you,
Of its own, or by a will which directs it down.