How could anyone stay sane with entire lifetimes stored in one human mind?

Barbarians, we call them, while all the while we timidly cling to our Web like Visigoths crouching in the ruins of Rome's faded glory and proclaim ourselves civilized.

The past is dead and buried. But I know now that buried things have a way of rising to the surface when one least expects them to.

As for the depiction of the Catholic church, it's not meant to be a prediction

Seduction... was both a science and art - a blend of skill, discipline, proximity, and opportunity. Mostly proximity.

Merely to live without a pain Is little gladness, little gain, Ah, welcome joy tho' mixt with grief-- The thorn-set flower that crowns the leaf.

Every age fraught with discord and danger seems to spawn a leader meant only for that age, a political giant whose absence, in retrospect, seems inconceivable when the history of that age is written.