“We live in a tired world—a tired world—a world that has gone on piling up speculation and observations until truths that might been graspable in the bright Dayspring of human morning—by the young Plotinus or the ecstatic John on Patmos—are obscured by palimpsest on palimpsest….  [T]he lovely lines of faith that sprung up in aspiring  towers of the ancient ministers and abbeys are both worn away by time, and grime, softly shrouded by the smutty accretions of our industrial cities, our wealth, our discoveries themselves, our Progress….  [T]he Scribe of Genesis did well to locate the source of all our misery in that greed for knowledge which has also been our greatest spur.”

-A.S. Byatt, Possession

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