Such was, and such should be, the punishment of unrestrained passions and atrocious deeds! Such shall be, the chatisement of that blind curiosity, which would transgress those bounds the wisdom of the Creator has prescribed to human knowledge; and such the dreadful disappointment of that restless ambition, which, aiming at discoveries reserved for beings of a supernatural order, perceives not, through its infatuated pride, that the condition of man upon earth is to be -

humble and ignorant.


~William Beckford's Vathek
1760 - 1844