2 Esdras 7:62-64

New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised

Lamentation of Ezra, with Response

⁶² I replied and said, ‘O earth, what have you brought forth, if the mind is made out of the dust like the other created things? ⁶³ For it would have been better if the dust itself had not been born, so that the mind might not have been made from it. ⁶⁴ But now the mind grows with us, and therefore we are tormented, because we perish and we know it.