Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they seemed to become with it, and with themselves as well.

They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness & power & beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier for them to see that something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow.

When the world was in darkness & wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it.

But when the world became bright with reason & riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle’s eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.

Well, they were going to destroy it again, were they – this garden Earth, civilized & knowing, to be torn apart again that Man might hope again in wretched darkness.

A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1959)