Rumi Kalam

What we have to seek for, then, is that which does not each day pass more and more under the control of some power [like time or chance] that cannot be withstood. And what is this? It is the soul: upright, good, and great. What else could you call such a soul than a god dwelling as a guest in a human body? A soul like this may descend into a Roman knight just as well as in to a freedman's son or a slave. For what is a Roman knight, or a freedman's son, or a slave? They are mere titles, born of ambition or wrong. One may leap to heaven from the very slums. Only rise

And mold thyself in kinship with thy God.
[Vergil, Aeneid, viii].

This molding will not be done in gold or silver; an image that is to be in the likeness of God cannot be fashioned of such materials. Consider this: that when the gods were kind to men they were made of clay.

Seneca the Younger to Lucilius, Epistle XXXI (tr. R. M. Gummere, slightly modified).