From The Mnemone, from Robert Sheckley's short story collection Can You Feel Anything When I do This?:
We are men: queer beasts with strange appetites. Who could have imagined us to possess a thirst for the ineffable? What was the hunger that could lead a man to exchange three bushels of corn for a single saying of the Gnostics? To feast on the spiritual - this seems to be what men must do; but who could have imagined it of us? Who would have thought us sufferers of malnutrition because we had no Plato? Can a man grow sickly from lack of Plutarch, or die from an Aristotle deficiency?
...Our past is a necessary part of us, and to take away that part is to mutilate us irreparably. I know a man who achieved courage only after he was told of Epaminondas, and a woman who became beautiful only after she heard of Aphrodite.
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If you can ever get a copy of this collection, read it just for that story. Sheckley's Journey Beyond Tomorrow is also drop-dead genious, and highly recommended.
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Art from the archive: a scene from the Garden of Gethsemane, according to the Gospel according to John Woo:
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