You _must_ take it.

The only choice is _how_.
"When I found I was black," said Dumas, "I resolved to live as if I were white, and so force men to look below my skin." In the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society is a prospectus used by Longfellow in canvassing, on one of the blank leaves of which are the skeleton stanzas of "Excelsior," which he was evidently evolving as he trudged from house to house.
"Disregarding the honors that most men value and looking to the truth," said Plato, "I shall endeavor in reality to live as virtuously as I can; and, when I die, to die so.

And I invite all other men to the utmost of my power; and you, too, I invite to this contest, which, I affirm, surpasses all contests here." "Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and singly toward an object, and in no measure obtained it ?" asked Thoreau.
"If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated?
Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them,--that it was a vain endeavor ?" "O if the stone can only have some vision of the temple of which it is to be a part forever," exclaimed Phillips Brooks, "what patience must fill it as it feels the blows of the hammer, and knows that success for it is simply to let itself be wrought into what shape the master wills." Man never reaches heights above his habitual thought.

It is not enough now and then to mount on wings of ecstasy into the infinite.

We must habitually dwell there.