Petrarch's letter to us

For all writers who fear everything that could be written has been.

"Put this concern aside, I beg you, and never let it induce you to be lazy, for certain ancestors of ours have already removed this worry, and I [,Petrarch,] will now remove it for those who come after me: for although ten thousand years may pass and centuries pile upon centuries, never will virtue be praised enough; never will there be enough lessons about how to love God and to hate sinful pleasures; never will the road to the discovery of new ideas be closed to eager minds. Therefore, let us be of good spirit: we do not labor in vain, nor will those do so who will be born many ages in the future right up to the end of this aging world. Rather, it is to be feared that men will cease to exist before their efforts in humanistic studies will have enabled them to penetrate the most secret mysteries of truth."

~ from Petrarch's letter to Tommaso da Messina found in Letters on Familiar Matters: Books I-VIII. trans. Aldo Bernardo. Albany State University of New York Press, 1975.